Available from Pimoroni:
http://shop.pimoroni.com/products/unicorn-hat
http://shop.pimoroni.com/products/unicorn-phat
Because Unicorn HAT uses the PWM hardware, which is also how your Raspberry Pi generates analog audio, you may see random colour patterns and flickering.
If this happens, you should add the following to your /boot/config.txt
:
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
Sound will work fine using speakers on, for example, an HDMI TV, but you will not be able to use your Pi's 3.5mm audio jack in conjunction with Unicorn HAT.
unicornhat
Python Library & ExamplesHere you'll find everything you need to start lighting up your Unicorn HAT or pHAT using python.
Python users should probably ignore most of this repository and just:
Full install ( recommended ):
curl -sS https://get.pimoroni.com/unicornhat | bash
Install for Python 3:
sudo apt-get install python3-pip python3-dev
sudo pip3 install unicornhat
Install for Python 2:
sudo apt-get install python-pip python-dev
sudo pip install unicornhat
Install from GitHub
Note this library requires the rpi_ws281x Python library which you can find here: https://github.com/pimoroni/rpi_ws281x-python
git clone https://github.com/pimoroni/unicorn-hat
cd unicorn-hat/library/UnicornHat
sudo python setup.py install
cd ../..
Then proceed to examples.
unicornhat
needs root access to function. Please make sure you start LXTerminal and run idle or idle3 with the "sudo" command like so:
sudo idle
Sometimes Unicorn HAT may fail with an error code, this table details some of the places to look for answers in specific cases:
sudo python yourcode.py
unicornhat
is based upon a modified, Pi 2/3 compatible version of the RPi ws281x Library by Jeremy Garff.
The library was modified by Richard Hirst.
Note: unicornhat
is no longer based upon this library, but this information is included for posterity.
unicornhat
was previously based upon a modified version of the ws2812 C driver from: https://github.com/626Pilot/RaspberryPi-NeoPixel-WS2812