Creating Custom Bitmaps

You can store up to eight custom bitmaps using PiFace Control and Display. Each bitmap describes a single character on the LCD screen (5x8 pixels).

To create a custom bitmap you instantiate an LCDBitmap which takes a list of binary values each describing a line. For example:

>>> quaver = pifacecad.LCDBitmap([2, 3, 2, 14, 30, 12, 0])

or as hex:

>>> quaver = pifacecad.LCDBitmap([0x2, 0x3, 0x2, 0xe, 0x1e, 0xc, 0x0])

or as binary (you can almost see the bitmap image here):

>>> quaver = pifacecad.LCDBitmap([0b00010,
...                               0b00011,
...                               0b00010,
...                               0b01110,
...                               0b11110,
...                               0b01100,
...                               0b00000])

Note

You can use this tool to help design custom bitmaps. Make sure you select 5x8.

You store and display custom bitmaps with the following commands:

>>> cad = pifacecad.PiFaceCAD()
>>> cad.lcd.store_custom_bitmap(0, quaver)
>>> cad.lcd.write_custom_bitmap(0)

Here is a complete code example:

>>> import pifacecad
>>> cad = pifacecad.PiFaceCAD()
>>> quaver = pifacecad.LCDBitmap([0x2, 0x3, 0x2, 0xe, 0x1e, 0xc, 0x0])
>>> cad.lcd.store_custom_bitmap(0, quaver)
>>> cad.lcd.write_custom_bitmap(0)