🚀 | Support displays on future3

[s-martin]

Feature

Phoniebox V3 should support displays (e.g. Pirate Audio HATs or HD44780 or SH1106).

User perspective

Displays should show information about currently played songs (e.g. album, title, etc), maybe even cover art.

Further information

• Design decision, if general support for displays (like multiple players) or each display is implemented for itself.

[s-martin]

#1112 would be replaced by a new implementation

[Lippsson]

I'm currently testing whether I can rewrite a script for the small 1.3" displays (128x64 pixels). The script from Splitti still works, but I'm missing things like the battery symbol and the indicators for shuffle and repeat.
If anyone has the time, desire and knowledge, help is welcome and appreciated.

[s-martin]

👍
I don't know how much the script from splitti relies on the Phoniebox implementation (V2).

This issue should target the V3 implementation.

[s-martin]

I envision the implementation in two parts:

Access/control of the display hardware ("backend", if you will)

This should be specific to the used display hardware, but every backend should provide a show() method, which is called by the frontend to show stuff on the display.

In addition methods like reload, clear, etc.

Generic, configurable display ("frontend")

The user should be able to configure the information to be displayed, e.g. artist, song name, cover art, maybe meta info (such as battery status or Phoniebox version, etc.).

This is of course dependent of the used backend/hardware, e.g. resolution etc.

This part should handle the RPC to retrieve information to be displayed.

[s-martin]

#1710

[s-martin]

• Library for LCD: PirateAudio? HD44780? https://github.com/rm-hull/luma.lcd
• Library for LED Matrix: MAX7219? https://github.com/rm-hull/luma.led_matrix
• Library for OLED: SH1106? https://github.com/rm-hull/luma.oled

[Lippsson]

Some more ideas for display integration:

[Lippsson]

This is just a first test to see what is possible.

[gschnitzler]

Have a look at this implementation.
Its sort of a drop in replacement for splittis script. Just follow splittis install script, then install any missing python dependencies.
This might provide a better starting point for your own implementation.