Programming hardware displays the easy way - using MicroPython and LVGL — Marc-André Lemburg

[EuroPython 2025 — South Hall 2B on 2025-07-18]
🎤 Programming hardware displays the easy way - using MicroPython and LVGL by Marc-André Lemburg
🔗 https://ep2025.europython.eu/session/...

📝 Abstract:

Pitch

Ever wanted to know how the displays in your smart watch work and how you can create such devices yourself ? Using just your Python skills and a bit of USB cabling ? MicroPython and LVGL make this easy and this talk will show you how.

Abstract

The world of embedded hardware devices is often considered difficult and having a steep learning curve. MicroPython has changed this for the better and now you no longer have to drop to C to implement your ideas on microcontrollers and dedicated hardware.

In this talk, we will explore the world of visualizing data using a nifty device based on the ESP32 microcontroller and a TFT display - better known under the name Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) - with the aim of creating a hardware conference talk timer.

The implementation is done in MicroPython and uses the high quality open source embedded graphics library LVGL, the basis of many commercial devices with displays and smart watches, for beautiful graphics.

I'll show the tooling needed to get started, useful resources, demo the application and discuss some of the pitfalls found along the way.

Resources

MicroPython https://micropython.org/
LVGL https://lvgl.io/
LV MicroPython https://github.com/lvgl/lv_micropython
CYD https://github.com/witnessmenow/ESP32...

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