MicroPython

The Tufty2350 LCD badge is a 2.8 inch screen with a rechargeable battery in a sturdy case. It comes with a lanyard so you can hang it around your neck and the case is shaped so that it also doubles as a desktop stand. I bought the Tufty2350 LCD badge during the Pi Day sale a few months ago, but I've not really done much with it.

That was until a few weeks ago. I went to LocalGov Drupal Camp 2026 in Sheffield recently and decided to use it as a badge for the conference. I spent a few evenings before the event writing come MicroPython code to create a badge application that I used at the event. I was impressed with the badge itself, and it was certainly a topic of conversation from a few people over the event.

I also added a bit of extra functionality to the badge where users could scan a QR code that would take them to a form on this site, where they could enter a short message. That message would then appear on the badge within a few seconds.

Following on from my article looking at the Pimoroni Plasma 2350 W I decided to do something interesting with the Wifi interface that would connect to a Drupal site.

The firmware of the Plasma 2350 W from Pimoroni comes with an example that connects to a free API to update the colour randomly. Once I saw this in action I realised that it shouldn't be too hard to convert that to pull the data from a Drupal REST service instead.

It is quite easy to create RESTful services in Drupal; it just needs a single class. All I would need to do is create a form to control the colour that is selected in the REST service.

It's that time of year again (Decemberween) so I was looking around for a set of addressible LED string lights to set up.

When you get a set of LED lights from your local supermarket they will often be either a single circuit or a set of multiple circuits. This means that they are either all on, or can alternate in a set number of patterns. This is frankly rather dull.

What supermarkets don't have is addressible LED string lights. In these lights each LED on the wire can be address individually to set the colour or brightness. You can tell if the lights are addressible as they will have three cables, two for power, and one for communicating with the lights.