hey guys and gals, so i have a pi zero w just collecting dust and was thinking about getting the Unicorn HAT HD and making a mini version of the Mooninite sign like the ones that shut down Boston in 2007 to put on my desk. i am a n00b to coding in general and have no idea where to start. Anyone have any experience coding the Unicorn HD that can tell me if it is doable? maybe point me toward a good place to start or a decent place to learn the basics?
There are some tutorials in the learn section that should get you motivated.
Projects, tutorials, reviews, and more for todays digital Makers (pimoroni.com)
I’m not sure how well the Hat code runs on an HD though? I have two Unicorn Hat HD’s and the Unicorn Mimi. I haven’t done any graphics. I’m displaying scrolling text messages with the current weather info.
Hi both,
Regrettably, for some unknown reason that link is giving a 404. It seems to have moved to here. Though it references the Unicorn Hat Mini. It covers the basics for any of the Unicorn hats. Personally found it a great starting point.
I’ve been running a Unicorn Hat HD, on a ZeroW v1 without any performance issues. The host system overheads are very low, as the board has it’s own nippy little ARM chip.
Purely for the purposes of clarity, the UnicornHatHD is a 16x16 grid. This makes creating, especially, static images to display on it a breeze. Using a program called PikoPixel. Last time I checked it’s in the PiOS repositories.
Create your image with PikoPixel, ensuring that it is a 16x16 px grid, saved as a PNG file. Save it with a suitable filename in a PNG format
Using the Pimoroni show-png example from their GitHub page. Edit line 33 img = Image.open('lofi.png') change the “lofi.png” example to the name of your file, save, and run it. You may need to add the full path on your file system, or copy your pixel art to the same location of the script.
Et voila! Your image should be displayed on the Unicorn Hat HD.
Hope this helps. Happy creating.
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What I had originally done was go here,
Projects, tutorials, reviews, and more for todays digital Makers (pimoroni.com)
And type unicorn into the search box. Then copied the url. It worked when I first posted it, but doesn’t now?
The Mini and Hat HD both use SPI. The Hat and pHat use a data pin.