Tempe Examples#

The Tempe repository contains some example code that demonstrates the concepts involved in working with Tempe as a library. Most of the code was written to work on Raspberry Pi Picos with Pimoroni 320x240 ST7789-based SPI displays. Users have had success with other ST7789-based displays, and in principle any display which allows blitting a 16-bit framebuffer into a windowed region of memory should be able to work.

Support Modules#

Extra Fonts and Data Modules#

Some examples use additional modules to provide fonts and data that are not installed by the usual mip install. You will either need to install the directories example_fonts and data on your device manually, or use the ci.deploy_to_device command as discussed in Development Installation.

The tempe_config Module#

To allow the examples to work with different displays, they expect the user to have added a tempe_config module somewhere on the Python path (eg. at the top-level directory of the flash storage device), containing an async function init_display() that might look something like the following:

async init_display():
    display = MyDisplay()
    await display.init()
    return display

There are some examples which show how to write such a file for:

If your device is not currently supported, you may need to write a Display subclass in addition to the init_display. The following is an example of how to wrap a 3rd party driver for use with the examples:

GC9A01 screens using Robert Hughes’ gc9a01_mpy firmware

Ultimo#

One example uses the Ultimo library. You can mip install this as described in the Ultimo documentation.

Running the Examples#

Once installed the examples can be run in a number of ways.

Running using your IDE#

Most Micropython IDEs allow you to run scripts directly from the IDE. This should work for all examples, although this has only been tested with Thonny.

Running using mpremote#

Once the support modules are installed, you can run example files stored on your computer’s filesystem via mpremote. For example:

mpremote run examples/hello_world.py

Running from the Python REPL#

If the example files have been installed on the Python path, you should be able to run them by importing their main function and calling it.

>>> from hello_world import main
>>> main()