pimoroni-emulator 0.1.0

Desktop emulator for Pimoroni devices (Tufty, Presto, Badger, Blinky, Inky)

pimoroni-emu

Desktop emulator for Pimoroni devices. Run MicroPython and Raspberry Pi apps on your desktop with simulated displays, buttons, and touch input.

Note: This is an unofficial community project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Pimoroni.

Screenshots

Badges & displays

Tufty 2350	Badger 2350

Badgeware (LED matrix)

Blinky 2350

Inky

Inky Frame 7.3"	Inky Impression 5.7"

Presto

Presto

Install

pip install pimoroni-emulator

Or from source:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/iksaif/pimoroni-emu
cd pimoroni-emulator
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Usage

# Run an app on a specific device
pimoroni-emulator --device tufty apps/tufty/hello_badge.py
pimoroni-emulator --device presto apps/presto/touch_demo.py
pimoroni-emulator --device badger apps/badger/hello_badge.py
pimoroni-emulator --device inky_frame apps/inky_frame/hello_inky.py
pimoroni-emulator --device inky_impression apps/inky_impression/hello_impression.py

# Device is auto-detected from app path
pimoroni-emulator apps/tufty/hello_badge.py

# List all supported devices
pimoroni-emulator --list-devices

# Headless mode (for CI/testing)
pimoroni-emulator --device tufty --headless --max-frames 5 app.py

# Save frames to disk
pimoroni-emulator --device presto --autosave frames/ app.py

# Enable API call tracing
pimoroni-emulator --device tufty --trace app.py

# Scale display window
pimoroni-emulator --device tufty --scale 3 app.py

Keyboard controls

• Q / Escape - Quit
• A, S, D, F, G - Buttons A-E (device-dependent)
• Up / Down - UP/DOWN buttons (Tufty, Badger)
• Mouse click - Touch input (Presto)

Compatibility matrix

Devices

Family	Device	Display	Resolution	Library	Status
Tufty	Tufty 2350	TFT IPS	320x240	PicoGraphics	Working
Blinky	Blinky 2350	LED matrix	39x26	Badgeware	Partial
Presto	Presto	TFT IPS touch	480x480	PicoGraphics	Working
Badger	Badger 2350	E-ink mono	296x128	PicoGraphics	Working
Inky Frame	7.3"	E-ink 6-color	800x480	PicoGraphics	Working
	5.8"	E-ink 7-color	600x448	PicoGraphics	Working
	4.0"	E-ink 7-color	640x400	PicoGraphics	Working
Inky Impression	7.3"	E-ink 6-color	800x480	inky (RPi)	Working
	5.7"	E-ink 7-color	600x448	inky (RPi)	Working
	4.0"	E-ink 7-color	640x400	inky (RPi)	Working
	13.3"	E-ink 6-color	1200x1600	inky (RPi)	Working

Mock modules

Module	Coverage	Notes
picographics	Good	Drawing primitives, text, fonts, framebuffer
pimoroni	Good	Button class, RGBLED
machine	Partial	Pin, PWM, I2C, SPI stubs
presto	Good	Presto class, touch
badger2040	Good	Badger2040 class
badgeware	Partial	Drawing API for Blinky
inky	Good	Inky, InkyImpression, auto-detect
inky_frame	Good	InkyFrame class
network / socket	Stubs	WiFi connect, basic HTTP
jpegdec / pngdec	Good	Decode via Pillow, render to framebuffer
picovector	Partial	Basic vector/polygon support
Sensors	Stubs	BME280, LTR559, LSM6DS3, QwSTPad

Not yet working

Easy

• Blinky + PicoGraphics - Blinky apps using PicoGraphics fail to import pimoroni. Fix: register pimoroni in install_badgeware_mocks() before app thread starts (race condition).
• E-ink refresh timing - Display updates instantly. Fix: add optional time.sleep() in e-ink render().
• Audio/buzzer - Silently ignored. Fix: use pygame.mixer to play tones.
• SD card I/O - The SDCard class maps to a temp dir but uos.mount() doesn't wire it up. Fix: translate /sd/ paths in _vfs_open().

Medium

• PicoVector fonts - Polygons/shapes work, but text falls back to bitmap font. Fix: parse .af font files (Alright Fonts, simple binary format) and rasterize glyphs as polygons.
• Hardware interrupts - Pin.irq() stores handlers but nothing calls _trigger_irq() from the button manager. Fix: wire ButtonManager.handle_key_down() to Pin._trigger_irq().
• Real WiFi bridging - --real-network flag exists but doesn't actually connect. Fix: implement using socket/requests passthrough for urequests and usocket.
• Sensor panel interactivity - Sliders exist for battery but not for light/temperature. Fix: add sensor value sliders to SensorPanel.

Hard

• Memory constraints - No simulation of RP2040/RP2350 RAM limits. Would need tracking allocations in mock gc module.
• I2C/SPI peripherals - Stubs return zeros. Full simulation would require modeling each breakout board's register map.
• PicoVector SVG - No SVG file loading. Would need an SVG parser (e.g. via svgpathtools or custom).

Testing

pytest tests/ -v

The test harness supports headless execution, screenshot capture, button simulation, and touch input:

from emulator.testing import DeviceTest

class TestMyApp(DeviceTest):
    device = "tufty"
    app = "apps/tufty/hello_badge.py"

    def test_display(self):
        self.run_frames(5)
        self.screenshot("output.png")

    def test_button(self):
        self.click_button("A")
        self.run_frames(3)

Architecture

emulator/
  __main__.py          # CLI entry point
  main.py              # App runner, event loop
  devices/             # Device configs (resolution, buttons, features)
  display/             # Renderers (TFT, LED matrix, e-ink)
  hardware/            # Input simulation (buttons, touch, sensors)
  mocks/               # MicroPython module replacements (~38 modules)
  testing/             # Test harness and screenshot comparison
vendor/                # Upstream submodules (read-only reference)
apps/                  # Demo applications

The emulator injects mock modules into sys.modules before running your app. Three mock profiles exist:

• PicoGraphics - For Tufty, Presto, Badger, Inky Frame
• Badgeware - For Blinky 2350
• inky - For Inky Impression (Raspberry Pi)

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Vendor submodules under vendor/ are all MIT-licensed (Pimoroni Ltd).