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pimoroni
pimoroni-pico
C2023–2024
pimoroni / pimoroni-pico

pimoroni-pico

Libraries and examples to support Pimoroni Pico add-ons in C++ and MicroPython.

Hardware & EmbeddedLibraries & SDKs
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
5Distinct people
5Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
1.6KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Libraries and examples to support Pimoroni Pico add-ons in C++ and MicroPython.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

I've done a lot of programmable LED projects (keyword Neopixel or WS2812) and by far my favorite hardware has been this little raspberry pi pico board that takes care of the…

jazzyjackson used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month5 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2023-05-11 22:59:17 UTC to 2024-12-15 19:40:05 UTC.

0122023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsMay 20232023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsFeb 20242024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsDec 2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
May 20232023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jun 20232023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Jul 20232023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20232023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20232023-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20232023-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20232023-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20232023-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20242024-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20242024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20242024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20242024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20242024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20242024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20242024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20242024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20242024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20242024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Dec 20242024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

5 sources
tracyspacy·Dec 15, 2024
Hey, first of all, thanks for having a look. Honestly, I never thought it would grab any attention, but your feedback is definitely valid. This small driver was something I quickly put together as a simple prototype, borrowing parts from Pimoroni’s C++ driver https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/tree/main/drivers/... (you probably find some answers here). I initially needed it as part of a Pimoroni GFX PACK driver concept I was working on. Now that it’s got some attention, it seems worth spending more time improving it.
In A driver for controlling RGB LEDs using PWM, with gamma correction
TheTank·Nov 12, 2024
There isn't any library for the trading UI or graphics elements. The only library in this case was the display graphics library which allows to draw simple primitives such as squares, lines, circles, text, etc. [1] The UI is a bunch of elements you would see on various trading systems (orderbook, trade blotter, market depth chart, intraday rolling chart, scrolling news ticker etc). But they had to be implemented from scratch using these primitive shapes and coordinates on screen. For example, the chart element is rendered by looping over the recent prices, calculating the min/max values to derive a range and adding a buffer on either side. Then calculating the price interval of each pixel (difference min-max divided by the number of pixels of my chart area). I then iterate over the prices, calculate their positions on the display in pixel
Read the rest
s, and draw series of lines between consecutive prices. [1] https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/blob/main/micropyt...
In Making a trading Gameboy: A pocket exchange and algo trading platform
gadgetoid·Jun 2, 2023
It takes some time to decode, but I can grab- for example- this 259k JPEG: http://placekitten.com/3840/2160 And display it from the microSD card with this code: https://gist.github.com/Gadgetoid/0b8e352e377135d743338c9483... As more or less demonstrated by this example: https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/blob/main/micropyt... Decoding is done via Larry Bank's JPEGDEC: https://github.com/bitbank2/JPEGDEC It uses roughly 20k RAM to provide the necessary buffers both for decoding JPEGs into blocks which are passed to a drawing routine that handles copying the data into the display RAM buffer (on our larger Inky display this is backed by PSRAM). I don't believe there's a hard limit to the size of the JPEGs you can display. The main bottlenecks are decoding time and the relatively limited scaling options: FULL, HALF, QUARTER, EIGHTH. Th
Read the rest
is aside, the authors solution is actually quite elegant. As long as you have control over the image pipeline there's no real reason to encumber the device with handling large (both in bytes and pixel dimensions) files. You'll also get much better dithering results writing your own routine to convert files from JPG to the raw 4-bits per pixel format for the display. Our built-in dithering is just a plain ordered dither matrix and, while quaint and retro, it leaves much to be desired visually. If you're trying to use a public API you can also make GitHub actions automate the whole image conversion process and publish the results to GitHub pages. This works great for, for example, the daily XKCD, serving both to reformat the strip for the display, credit the author, extract the "alt" text and avoid excess requests to the origin. Eg: https://pimoroni.github.io/feed2image/xkcd-800x480-daily.jpg. Though the astute will notice I still opted for jpeg in this case.
In Family Photos vs 256 Kb RAM
whiskers·Jun 2, 2023
Context: I'm the CEO of Pimoroni who make this product. I feel like something is missing here but I don't know what. Our examples show large JPEGs being loaded in MicroPython no problem. For example this one from our examples is 100kB: https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/blob/main/micropyt... During testing I worked with many images that were larger than that and never ran into issues either. I think the examples provided are pretty clear and demonstrate how to use the product reasonably. We focus on MicroPython because the C++ SDK for connectivity is pretty gnarly for most people to work with - it is our intention you should never have to leave MicroPython to use this product. No idea what the battery issue could be but I've never heard of any problem like that before and we've shipped thousands of this product over the past year.
Read the rest
We'd be happy to get the unit back and test it for you if you want - or just replace it! Please drop me a line if you want to discuss these issues further and I'll do my best to help!
In Family Photos vs 256 Kb RAM
jazzyjackson·May 11, 2023Recommendation phrase
I've done a lot of programmable LED projects (keyword Neopixel or WS2812) and by far my favorite hardware has been this little raspberry pi pico board that takes care of the power requirements for you, a USB-C cable can supply 3 amps, powering one or two hundred LEDs with ease. There's lot of Arduino boards that let you program a few neopixels, but supplying power for lots of them is usually the annoying part. https://shop.pimoroni.com/en-us/products/plasma-2040 https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/tree/main/micropyt...
In Ask HN: Getting started with DIY programming of electronics

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