Hello all, my name is ᗰᓮᖽᐸᕧ and I created this Nuimo tester with a Qt user-interface.

My favourite programming ui for Python is PyCharm, but I guess you’ll manage choosing the proper one.

Don’t know what a nuimo is? Check it out here: https://www.senic.com/, or view the video to get an instant impression:https://vimeo.com/127021296 Even more intimate details can be found here https://blog.senic.com/developing-for-the-nuimo-controller-7292becfacff#.yz6pp1lsh  

I was looking into the development of a remote control for a project I’m working on, also on the Raspberry Pi (WebRadio, coming soon!), and noticed the lack of resources available to enable programmers to visually test character display on the 9x9 matrix. I decided to develop some tester myself, including support for extended codepage characters, like cyrillic to be specific.

You can test the app without communication to the Nuimo on OSX.

For setting up your Pi and PyQt etc, I will add some information below, to get you going.

Instructions assume the use of a Raspberry Pi 3.

• Send/receive characters to the Nuimo and Qt UI

• Test text scrolling

• Create/edit own creations (can be added to the fonts resource file, if needed)

• When a edit is done, the hex representation of the creation is displayed in the text field for now

• As a test string, the initial text is set to Try scrolling text… in Russian :

Попробуйте прокрутки текста...

Update the system

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Installing proftpd

To ease the upload to your pi, you should be able to use ftp.

Use the following command.

sudo apt-get install proftpd

Installing Python + Qt

sudo apt-get install python-qt4 python-mpd python-mpdclient python-rpi.gpio

sudo apt-get install python-dev libxml2 libxml2-dev libxslt-dev

pip install lxml #(takes 10 minutes)

Installing Python Bluetooth Support

sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev

sudo pip install bluepy

Installing x11vnc

If you install VNC as stated, you will be able to set up a session on OS X using the Screen Sharing utility (which needs the server to ask for a password)

sudo apt-get install x11vnc

#set pass

x11vnc -storepasswd

#Enter VNC password:********

#Verify password:********

Write password to /home/pi/.vnc/passwd?  [y]/n y

x11vnc -desktop :0 -noxrecord -noxfixes -noxdamage -usepw -forever

Autostart_xvnc

#create autostart directory

mkdir ~/.config/autostart

#create new script

nano ~/.config/autostart/xvnc.desktop

#copy paste and edit

[Desktop Entry]

Type=Application

Name= XVNC

Comment=Starts XVNC at startup

Exec= x11vnc -desktop :0 -noxrecord -noxfixes -noxdamage -usepw -forever

Path=/home/pi

Download the source, and have fun!

On OS X you can launch the program with python launcher to check it out.

On the Pi, use python nuimo_matrix.py /[MAC Address of your Nuimo]/ (e.g.E7:F7:E5:C8:BB:91)