Getting Started

At the moment installation is experimental, but should work.

Installation

Tempe can be installed from github via mip. You can install either released versions or the unstable head of the main branch, as needed.

You need to install the Tempe library and display drivers separately. If you do not need the ST7789 drivers and are writing your own, you don’t need to install the display drivers.

Released Versions

Released versions can be installed with mip by specifying the release branch:

>>> mip.install("github:unital/tempe/src/tempe", version="rel/0.3")
>>> mip.install("github:unital/tempe/src/tempe_displays", version="rel/0.3")

or using mpremote:

mpremote mip install github:unital/tempe/src/tempe@rel/0.3
mpremote mip install github:unital/tempe/src/tempe_displays@rel/0.3

Unstable

Unstable versions are installed from the main branch of the Github repo:

>>> mip.install("github:unital/tempe/tree/src/tempe/package.json")
>>> mip.install("github:unital/tempe/tree/src/tempe_displays/package.json")

or using mpremote:

mpremote mip install github:unital/tempe/tree/src/tempe/package.json
mpremote mip install github:unital/tempe/tree/src/tempe_displays/package.json

Development Installation

To simplify the development work-cycle with actual hardware, there is a helper script in the ci directory which will download the files onto the device. You will need an environment with mpremote and click installed. For example, on a Mac/Linux machine:

python -m venv tempe-env
source tempe-env/bin/activate
pip install mpremote click

should give you a working environment.

Ensure that the Pico is plugged in to your computer and no other program (such as Thonny or an IDE) is using it. You can then execute:

python -m ci.deploy_to_device

and this will install the tempe code in the /lib directory (which is on sys.path) and the examples in the main directory, with example data in /data and example fonts in /example_fonts.

You can optionally used the -march argument to have the files (other than the examples and example driveers) cross-compiled for the specified architecture. Eg. for a Raspberry Pi Pico, you would do:

python -m ci.deploy_to_device -march armv6m

Writing Code Using Tempe

Although Tempe is a Micropython library, it provides .pyi stub files for typing support. If you add the tempe sources to the paths where tools like mypy and pyright look for stubs, then you should be able to get type-hints for the code you are writing in your IDE or as a check step as part of your CI.