RPI Pico & ST7789 Display

I purchased an off brand ST7789 1.3" Display a few months ago and recently decided it was time to try it out.

I did not realize it at the time but there isn't a consistent pinout between display boards. As it turns out the board I purchased did not pin out the chip-select (CS) line.

The ST7789 display driver will function without a CS line, however you need to configure the SPI mode (idle state, edge polarity) to communicate with the display. In most cases, I suppose that would be easy enough to change the display driver.

Now I wanted to make use of this display with a PI Pico and Micropython. Pimoroni provide a Micropython release with a small number additional libraries on top of MicroPython : https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico (unlike CircuitPython which is significantly different from MicroPython).

I was trying to get their example code for one of their displays: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/1-3-spi-colour-lcd-240x240-breakout to function with my off brand display. Unfortunately, I could not find a way to change the SPI operating mode of the display driver unless I wanted to compile their distribution from source (which I didn't want to do), the SPI initialization was all buried in C code.

An intsructables author provided a wonderful guide to breaking out the chip-select line: https://www.instructables.com/Adding-CS-Pin-to-13-LCD/ Many thanks. In the process of modify my display I learned a few things the hard way:

Rotated R1 90' to bypass the NPN switch
Tossed R2 away and used this as the CS pad
Be carful with getting the display too hot. The adhesive that held the display in place virtually no longer exists now
Be carful cleaning! Or don't clean at all. I ended up relocating the flux residue with isopropyl from the PCB to inside the display housing and its now a little merky

After the display modifications the display came to life!

I have never used one of these displays before, but I have to say I am impressed. I was able to get 35 FPS out of a 240x240 display running over SPI.

I still don't know what the best way to add graphics to the PICO is. The image I showed in the video was created with ffmpeg outputting a raw video frame:

ffmpeg -vcodec png -i img.png -vcodec rawvideo -f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb565 img.raw

Of this random image cropped down to 240x240:

Loading the image from flash was very slow.

Update: Image Loading Speed

The framebuffer for the ST7789 is stored big-endian so when I was loading the Image I had endian swap in python which was really slow. I can endian swap the raw image file format using dd:

dd conv=swab if=img.raw of=img2.raw

Now loading the image is now significantly faster:

t1 = time.ticks_us()
with open('img2.raw', 'rb') as f:
    for j in range(0,240,24):
        display_buffer[480*j:(480*(j+24))] = f.read(240*48)

display.update() # only update display once now, remove those tabs!
print((time.ticks_us() - t1)/1000)

Which now runs in 232 ms 85 ms and appears more as a transition animation versus terribly slow code.

Update: Overclocking in MicroPython

One can adjust the system clock frequency in MicroPython by issuing the following command:

machine.freq(190_000_000) # set system clock in Hz

When MicroPython alters the system clock frequency, it also reconfigures the peripheral clock source from clk_sys to the external crystal oscillator.

So, if you want to maintain a high-speed SPI clock frequency, you need to set the clock mux back to clk_sys yourself by:

mem32[0x40008000+0x48] = 0x800

With the Pico running at 190 MHz I achieved the following:

Rainbow Spinner: 53 FPS

FFT Demo: 16 FPS

Image Load + Draw: 56 ms (49ms letting the garbage collector run before the load)

Of course, there are no guarantees this will always work for every Pico and or display.

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scottiebabe over 3 years ago
Pimoroni Thermometer Demo

Original source code: https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/blob/main/micropython/examples/pico_display/thermometer.py

I modified this sample application to run on a 240x240 display. This really only involved creating a display object from the 240x240 driver class. I also removed the sleep statement for the demo to run as fast as possible.

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Sorry I bumped the board slightly out of focus. This is another neat example of what kind of performance you might see using uPython for graphics on a Pico.

The modified code I used:
# This example takes the temperature from the Pico's onboard temperature sensor, and displays it on Pico Display Pack, along with a little pixelly graph. # It's based on the thermometer example in the "Getting Started with MicroPython on the Raspberry Pi Pico" book, which is a great read if you're a beginner! from machine import Pin import utime import gc from breakout_colourlcd240x240 import BreakoutColourLCD240x240 rst = Pin(13,Pin.OUT) rst.value(1) width = BreakoutColourLCD240x240.WIDTH height = BreakoutColourLCD240x240.HEIGHT display_buffer = bytearray(width * height * 2) # 2-bytes per pixel (RGB565) display = BreakoutColourLCD240x240(display_buffer) # reads from Pico's temp sensor and converts it into a more manageable number sensor_temp = machine.ADC(4) conversion_factor = 3.3 / (65535) temp_min = 25 temp_max = 60 bar_width = 5 # Set the display backlight to 50% display.set_backlight(0.5) temperatures = [] colors = [(0, 0, 255), (0, 255, 0), (255, 255, 0), (255, 0, 0)] def temperature_to_color(temp): temp = min(temp, temp_max) temp = max(temp, temp_min) f_index = float(temp - temp_min) / float(temp_max - temp_min) f_index *= len(colors) - 1 index = int(f_index) if index == len(colors) - 1: return colors[index] blend_b = f_index - index blend_a = 1.0 - blend_b a = colors[index] b = colors[index + 1] return [int((a[i] * blend_a) + (b[i] * blend_b)) for i in range(3)] while True: # fills the screen with black display.set_pen(0, 0, 0) display.clear() # the following two lines do some maths to convert the number from the temp sensor into celsius reading = sensor_temp.read_u16() * conversion_factor temperature = 27 - (reading - 0.706) / 0.001721 temperatures.append(temperature) # shifts the temperatures history to the left by one sample if len(temperatures) > width // bar_width: temperatures.pop(0) i = 0 for t in temperatures: # chooses a pen colour based on the temperature display.set_pen(*temperature_to_color(t)) # draws the reading as a tall, thin rectangle display.rectangle(i, height - ((round(t)-20) * 4), bar_width, height) # the next tall thin rectangle needs to be drawn # "bar_width" (default: 5) pixels to the right of the last one i += bar_width # draws a white background for the text display.set_pen(255, 255, 255) display.rectangle(1, 1, 100, 25) # writes the reading as text in the white rectangle display.set_pen(0, 0, 0) display.text("{:.2f}".format(temperature) + "c", 3, 3, 0, 3) # time to update the display display.update() # Run Full Speed!
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scottiebabe over 3 years ago
Pimoroni Thermometer Demo

Original source code: https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/blob/main/micropython/examples/pico_display/thermometer.py

I modified this sample application to run on a 240x240 display. This really only involved creating a display object from the 240x240 driver class. I also removed the sleep statement for the demo to run as fast as possible.

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Sorry I bumped the board slightly out of focus. This is another neat example of what kind of performance you might see using uPython for graphics on a Pico.

The modified code I used:
# This example takes the temperature from the Pico's onboard temperature sensor, and displays it on Pico Display Pack, along with a little pixelly graph. # It's based on the thermometer example in the "Getting Started with MicroPython on the Raspberry Pi Pico" book, which is a great read if you're a beginner! from machine import Pin import utime import gc from breakout_colourlcd240x240 import BreakoutColourLCD240x240 rst = Pin(13,Pin.OUT) rst.value(1) width = BreakoutColourLCD240x240.WIDTH height = BreakoutColourLCD240x240.HEIGHT display_buffer = bytearray(width * height * 2) # 2-bytes per pixel (RGB565) display = BreakoutColourLCD240x240(display_buffer) # reads from Pico's temp sensor and converts it into a more manageable number sensor_temp = machine.ADC(4) conversion_factor = 3.3 / (65535) temp_min = 25 temp_max = 60 bar_width = 5 # Set the display backlight to 50% display.set_backlight(0.5) temperatures = [] colors = [(0, 0, 255), (0, 255, 0), (255, 255, 0), (255, 0, 0)] def temperature_to_color(temp): temp = min(temp, temp_max) temp = max(temp, temp_min) f_index = float(temp - temp_min) / float(temp_max - temp_min) f_index *= len(colors) - 1 index = int(f_index) if index == len(colors) - 1: return colors[index] blend_b = f_index - index blend_a = 1.0 - blend_b a = colors[index] b = colors[index + 1] return [int((a[i] * blend_a) + (b[i] * blend_b)) for i in range(3)] while True: # fills the screen with black display.set_pen(0, 0, 0) display.clear() # the following two lines do some maths to convert the number from the temp sensor into celsius reading = sensor_temp.read_u16() * conversion_factor temperature = 27 - (reading - 0.706) / 0.001721 temperatures.append(temperature) # shifts the temperatures history to the left by one sample if len(temperatures) > width // bar_width: temperatures.pop(0) i = 0 for t in temperatures: # chooses a pen colour based on the temperature display.set_pen(*temperature_to_color(t)) # draws the reading as a tall, thin rectangle display.rectangle(i, height - ((round(t)-20) * 4), bar_width, height) # the next tall thin rectangle needs to be drawn # "bar_width" (default: 5) pixels to the right of the last one i += bar_width # draws a white background for the text display.set_pen(255, 255, 255) display.rectangle(1, 1, 100, 25) # writes the reading as text in the white rectangle display.set_pen(0, 0, 0) display.text("{:.2f}".format(temperature) + "c", 3, 3, 0, 3) # time to update the display display.update() # Run Full Speed!
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RPI Pico & ST7789 Display

Pimoroni Thermometer Demo

Pimoroni Thermometer Demo