py-lightpack

This is a Python library for controlling Lightpack

It is a fork of the official Python library, which at the time of writing is buggy, unpackaged, unmaintained and undocumented. The goal of this project is to address those issues and make other improvements.

Python 2 and 3 are supported.

Installation

Install from PiPI:

sudo pip install py-lightpack

Or install from source by cloning this repository and running

sudo python setup.py install

Documentation

See the code or pydoc lightpack for full documentation.

Migrating from the official library

There are a number of breaking changes from the original library, though code should not be difficult to migrate. The changes include the following:

• The class name is now in studly case, so use lightpack.Lightpack() instead of lightpack.lightpack().
• The constructor now takes named arguments rather than expecting them in a particular order, and the apikey argument has been renamed to api_key.
• setSmooth has been renamed to setSmoothness.
• getAPIStatus has been renamed to getApiStatus.
• Colours are now passed to setColour and friends as a single tuple of red, green and blue values rather than separate arguments for each. So use lp.setColourToAll((10, 255, 128)) rather than lp.setColourToAll(10, 255, 128).
• When failing to connect (or when authentication fails during connection) there is now a much more reliable CannotConnectError.
• Method calls now raise a CommandFailedError on failure where before they were silent.

Spellings

Methods with the British spellings "colour" now exist, but the American "color" spellings are still supported.

Usage example

from __future__ import print_function

import lightpack
from time import sleep
import sys

# Configuration
# host = 'localhost' # (default)
# port = 3636 # (default)
led_map = [ # Optional aliases for the LEDs in order
	'bottom-right',
	'right-bottom',
	'right-top',
	'top-far-right',
	'top-right',
	'top-left',
	'top-far-left',
	'left-top',
	'left-bottom',
	'bottom-left',
]
# api_key = '{secret-code}' # Default is None

# Connect to the Lightpack API
lp = lightpack.Lightpack(led_map=led_map)
try:
	lp.connect()
except lightpack.CannotConnectError as e:
	print(repr(e))
	sys.exit(1)

# Lock the Lightpack so we can make changes
lp.lock()

# Flash green three times
for i in range(3):
	# The American spellings such as setColorToAll are available as aliases
	lp.setColourToAll((0, 255, 0))
	sleep(0.2)
	lp.setColourToAll((0, 0, 0))
	sleep(0.2)

# Set top right light to yellow
# The Colour class is optional
from colour import Colour
lp.setColour('top-right', Colour('yellow'))

sleep(1)

# Set left bottom and left right lights to two other colours
lp.setColours(('left-bottom', Colour('red')), ('left-top', Colour('goldenrod')))

sleep(1)

# Unlock to release control (the disconnect method actually calls this 
# automatically, but it is often useful on its own so is here for informational 
# purposes)
lp.unlock()

# Disconnect
lp.disconnect()