I have forked the pimoroni-pico project to add the ability to use GNU FreeFonts by making use of modified code from an Adafruit GFX library project.
This allows those fonts to be used on the Pico Explorer Base and Pico Display Pack. This is all working fine in C++ but I would like to provide the font functionality to those using MicroPython. I was expecting to find a new MicroPython uf2 file somewhere in the build folder as part of the build but it doesn’t appear to be there.
Has anyone done the above and have instructions on how I do this from a Windows 10 machine please?
Hello, I cant believe now one replied to this great question ,I dont have the knowledge to tell you how, I’m posting to bring it back to the top for users with the no-how who might have missed the post ,lets hope !
Thanks. I contacted Pimoroni support and they just pointed me to the standard pre-built uf2 and stated it was not something that they could help me with so I gave up and went back to my C++ clock/timer project.
I’m sorry Shoe but I don’t see info on how to build the MicroPython uf2 on Windows from the GitHub repo or the official SDK document. I see info on how to build the C++ uf2 but not the MicroPython one. Could you reference the page number that you are referring to please?
But also, it is not the standard pico-sdk MicroPython uf2 I need to build but the Pimoroni modified one that has support for Explorer base and Display pack.
This is over my head ,but I google ,and found a lot of info, so much my head is spinning ,but thought this might be somewhere to start ,and its free i think, scroll down about half way , Good Luck https://micropython.org/
The good news: After spending many hours building a Linux VM so I could compile there and getting it to run properly in Hyper-V (lots of issues - don’t ask) I can now build the pico-sdk micropython uf2 in Linux!
The bad news: However, I still don’t know how to build the Pimoroni version of this despite spending even more hours on it.
I’m sorry but I’ve wasted enough of my time on this. If anybody from Pimoroni produces a step by step guide on how to build their micropython uf2 (linux or otherwise) then I’ll come back to this. But, until then, I’ll stick with C/C++.
I posted a similar topic asking how to build a pick and mix approach for micropython libraries to support both Pimoroni add-ons for the Pi-Pico and those from other vendors. Disappointingly I too got no reply.
A bit after the fact, but I’ve recently been scratching my head trying to do almost the same thing - changing the display font. Posting here just in case anyone still cares…
I was very surprised to see a reply to my post 11 months after the last. I’ve been developing on non-Pimoroni kit mostly since then and have even switched from using Visual Code to the Arduino IDE for most of my Pico development. I am surprised (although I haven’t checked the 1464 commits to the base Pico library yet) to hear that fonts are still an issue. I thought Pimoroni might have implemented a font other than the 5x7 font by now.
Are you trying to use my fork or your own implementation? I ask as my fork is very out of date and I may look to see if I can get it up to date if people are using it (once I refamilarise myself of the process).
I ended up forking the pimoroni micropython repo, took a clone locally, made my changes, did a commit, then let the github action build it for me automatically. That worked.
I was doing it to get a new font into my Galactic Unicorn.
If anyone stumbles on this issue it appears to be related to version of Ubuntu (because of the included arm gcc).
I have found that both: Ubuntu 23.04, and Ubuntu 20.04 work correctly, but Ubuntu 22.04 does not. Ubuntu 22.04 is the current github actions “ubuntu-latest”.
Does anyone else have any known version that do or do not work? Does anyone know how to easily switch out the gcc-arm on the github actions images?