Merkury Innovations Multicolor Matrix LED Display Interfacing Library

Whew, what a mouthful, huh? MILI for short, provides automatic, high-level interfacing with the Merkury Innovation's Multicolor Matrix LED Display.

Why?

I went to Walmart one day, and picked up this LED panel. Naturally, it had an app, and every API developer's worst nightmare is other people's apps to control their technology. So, I started looking into alternatives.

I had come across this reverse-engineering of the model, specifically how it interfaces over BLE. Out of curiosity, I decided to start tinkering with it too.

While the reverse-engineering was perfect, and the protocol worked as expected, what didn't work as expected was trying to interface it like a library... because it wasn't a library. It's a toolkit. So, I decided to use the effort that was already there, and develop a library that plays nicer with developers who want to get things done their way, with their product.

Because of the nature of libraries, I felt it was best to provide an open-source, pip install ready iteration, versus the toolkit of scripts that was provided by the initial developer, offe. Without them, this project would not be possible. Thank you.

Download

You can install it from PyPi, using pip:

pip install mi-led-interface

...or download it, and built it yourself.

git clone https://github.com/the-sluggiest-cat/mi-led-interface.git
cd mi-led-interface
python3 -m venv venv
python3 -m pip install bleak
python3 -m pip install pil

Examples:

from mili.client import PanelClient
from mili.pixels import PixelGrid

# Until the script is stopped, if you have a model of the Matrix LED display close by,
# it will display a 16x16 rendition of "silly_picture.png" in the directory with the running script.
client = PanelClient()
pixel_grid = PixelGrid.from_image("silly_picture.png")
client.show_image(pixel_grid)

from mili.client import PanelClient
from mili.pixels import PixelGrid

# This works with animated images, too!
client = PanelClient()
pixel_grid = PixelGrid.from_image("silly_animation.gif")
client.show_image(pixel_grid)

from mili.client import PanelClient
from mili.pixels import PixelGrid
from PIL import Image

# You can also use PILlow's images...
client = PanelClient()
image = Image.open("a_pillow.png")
pixel_grid = PixelGrid.from_image(image)
client.show_image(pixel_grid)

from mili.client import PanelClient
from mili.pixels import PixelGrid, Pixel
from asyncio import run

# ...or go a little deeper, and represent individual bits and bytes!
def binary_representation(number: int):
    if isinstance(number, int) is False: return "0"*256
    string = bin(number).split("0b")[-1]
    if len(string) >= 256: return "0"*256
    iterations = 256 - len(string)
    returned_string = ""
    for _ in range(iterations):
        returned_string += "0"
    returned_string += string
    return returned_string

async def __main():
    panel_client = PanelClient()

    while True:
        pixel_grid = PixelGrid()
        b_r = binary_representation(floor(time()))
        for index, i in enumerate(b_r):
            pixel_grid.set_pixel(index%16, index//16, Pixel.from_bool(int(i)))
        await panel_client.draw_to_panel(pixel_grid)

run(__main())