Display

This module controls the 5×5 LED display on the front of your board. It can be used to display images, animations and even text.

Functions

microbit.display.get_pixel(x, y)

Return the brightness of the LED at column x and row y as an integer between 0 (off) and 9 (bright).

microbit.display.set_pixel(x, y, value)

Set the brightness of the LED at column x and row y to value, which has to be an integer between 0 and 9.

microbit.display.clear()

Set the brightness of all LEDs to 0 (off).

microbit.display.show(image)

Display the image.

microbit.display.show(image, delay=400, \*, wait=True, loop=False, clear=False)

If image is a string, float or integer, display letters/digits in sequence. Otherwise, if image is an iterable sequence of images, display these images in sequence. Each letter, digit or image is shown with delay milliseconds between them.

If wait is True, this function will block until the animation is finished, otherwise the animation will happen in the background.

If loop is True, the animation will repeat forever.

If clear is True, the display will be cleared after the iterable has finished.

Note that the wait, loop and clear arguments must be specified using their keyword.

Note

If using a generator as the iterable, then take care not to allocate any memory in the generator as allocating memory in an interrupt is prohibited and will raise a MemoryError.

microbit.display.scroll(text, delay=150, \*, wait=True, loop=False, monospace=False)

Scrolls text horizontally on the display. If text is an integer or float it is first converted to a string using str(). The delay parameter controls how fast the text is scrolling.

If wait is True, this function will block until the animation is finished, otherwise the animation will happen in the background.

If loop is True, the animation will repeat forever.

If monospace is True, the characters will all take up 5 pixel-columns in width, otherwise there will be exactly 1 blank pixel-column between each character as they scroll.

Note that the wait, loop and monospace arguments must be specified using their keyword.

microbit.display.on()

Use on() to turn on the display.

microbit.display.off()

Use off() to turn off the display (thus allowing you to re-use the GPIO pins associated with the display for other purposes).

microbit.display.is_on()

Returns True if the display is on, otherwise returns False.

microbit.display.read_light_level()

Use the display’s LEDs in reverse-bias mode to sense the amount of light falling on the display. Returns an integer between 0 and 255 representing the light level, with larger meaning more light.

Example

To continuously scroll a string across the display, and do it in the background, you can use:

import microbit

microbit.display.scroll('Hello!', wait=False, loop=True)