Pimoroni Pico_Unicorn display library for Arduino IDE

[victor_uk]

I have an application in ‘C’ that I would like to port to a Raspberry Pi Pico and use the Pico Unicorn Pack display with the Arduino ide - (The Pico C/C++ SDK route is unfortunately beyond my current level of expertise).

I previously had the system running in Python - using Thonny and the Pimoroni Micropython UF2, but need to move to ‘C’ for improved performance.

Is there any guidance how one can add the relevant libraries to the Arduino ide? (it's where I would prefer to work on projects).

Maybe someone else has already been able to get things working?

I have tried to manually add libraries from
github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/tree/main/libraries/pico_unicorn and
github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/tree/main/micropython/modules/pico_unicorn
as described in the Arduino reference “Installing Additional Arduino Libraries”
but I then get multiple secondary errors as the library discovery process fails to find all the other supporting files…

I’m guessing that there is a difference in compiling and building files between the pico-SDK and the Arduino implementation… Bit of a show stopper!

[bodmer]

Hello,
I recently bought the Unicorn LED display for the Raspberry Pico and like you I was rather disappointed to find only c code and python support.

Fortunately I have created libraries before to support displays, so based on the Pimoroni example I have created one here:

GitHub - Bodmer/Pico_Unicorn_GFX: Arduino library for Raspberry Pico with...

This is not available from the Arduino IDE library manager yet but I will suggest it is included. The library uses the Adafruit_GFX support library which is well documented. I have included one example to get started but will add more in future.

Hope this helps you, but it may be a bit late for your project!

You will need to use the Earle Philhower RP2040 board support package as the PIO is used to drive the display. That is available via the Arduino board manager.