An APA102 is a good choice to commence your learning on lower level data protocol and communication. After reviewing the APA102 datasheet for its data protocol (see the link under Technical requirements at the start of this chapter), the next logical step is to review some lower-level code. The APA102 example for PiGPIO is a one such starting point, but you'll find others on PyPi.org:
The Luma suite of libraries offers many high-level modules for integrating common display with a Raspberry Pi beyond the APA102 and SSD1306 OLED we covered in this chapter. Furthermore, Luma contains an extensive range of examples:
- Luma: https://pypi.org/project/luma.core (follow the links for different display types)
- Luma examples on GitHub: https://github.com/rm-hull/luma.examples
Luma uses a PIL (Python Imaging Library)/Pillow comparable API for drawing and manipulating displays. We specifically used ImageDraw...
