Pimoroni Galactic Unicorn Hello World

Introduction

583 RGB leds in 53x11 grid. Raspberry Pi Pico W (microcontroller), speaker with amplifier, two (2) I2C Stemma/qt sensor sockets (3 or 4 pin JST PH), a light sensor (phototransistor) facing front and nine (9) control buttons, a reset button, JST-PH battery connector.

Programming

Raspberry Pi Pico can be programmed using Micropython or C/C++. This will deal only with MicroPython.

To upload your file to Pico, it need to be put into bootloader mode: hold down the bootsel button while plugging the USB cable: it should show up as a drive called RPI-RP2.

IDE's

• Thonny is the da facto
• VS Studio: MicroPico (the id is paulober.pico-w-go). If not found use this https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/108147 because some Linux distros use OpenVSX.

Thonny

1. Connect the USB cable while bootsel button is pressed: RPI-RP2 is found on device manager.
2. Copy the pimoroni-galactic_unicorn-v1.20.6-micropython.uf2 to RPI-RP2.
3. Start thonny; see the right down corner that correct device is connected.
4. Program.
5. Run/ Stop / Load.

Micropython

Some libraries are needed. Download from https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/releases

from picographics import PicoGraphics, DISPLAY_GALACTIC_UNICORN

Manual: PicoGraphics

from galactic import GalacticUnicorn

Manual: GalacticUnicorn

from machine import Pin, I2C

Fonts

Stationary, centred, scrolling text.

Font library

Nice 5x3 characters: https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/galactic-unicorn-small-numeric-characters/20766

Effects

• Bouncing ball: https://www.instructables.com/Galactic-Unicorn-Bounce-Simple-GFX-Demo/