PyPortal US Election Calendar

Adafruit PyPortal Desktop Stand Enclosure Kit

PyPortal is our easy-to-use IoT device that allows you to create all the things for the “Internet of Things” in minutes. Create little pocket...

$9.95

In Stock

Fully Reversible Pink/Purple USB A to micro B Cable - 1m long

This cable is not only super-fashionable, with a woven pink and purple Blinka-like pattern, it's also fully reversible! That's right, you will save seconds a day by...

$3.95

In Stock

5V 1A (1000mA) USB port power supply - UL Listed

Wall wart power supply with 2 US prong power

Need a USB jack for charging or powering a project, but don't want to lug around a computer? This switching supply gives a clean regulated output at up to 1000mA! 110 or 240 input,...

$5.95

In Stock

Download the latest version of CircuitPython for the PyPortal via CircuitPython.org

CircuitPython is a derivative of MicroPython designed to simplify experimentation and education on low-cost microcontrollers. It makes it easier than ever to get prototyping by requiring no upfront desktop software downloads. Simply copy and edit files on the CIRCUITPY "flash" drive to iterate.

The following instructions will show you how to install CircuitPython. If you've already installed CircuitPython but are looking to update it or reinstall it, the same steps work for that as well!

Set up CircuitPython Quick Start!

Follow this quick step-by-step for super-fast Python power :)

Download the latest version of CircuitPython for the PyPortal Pynt via CircuitPython.org

Click the link above to download the latest version of CircuitPython for the PyPortal.

Download and save it to your desktop (or wherever is handy).

Plug your PyPortal into your computer using a known-good USB cable.

A lot of people end up using charge-only USB cables and it is very frustrating! So make sure you have a USB cable you know is good for data sync.

Double-click the Reset button on the top in the middle (magenta arrow) on your board, and you will see the NeoPixel RGB LED (green arrow) turn green. If it turns red, check the USB cable, try another USB port, etc. Note: The little red LED next to the USB connector will pulse red. That's ok!

If double-clicking doesn't work the first time, try again. Sometimes it can take a few tries to get the rhythm right!

You will see a new disk drive appear called PORTALBOOT.

Drag the adafruit-circuitpython-pyportal-<whatever>.uf2 file to PORTALBOOT.

The LED will flash. Then, the PORTALBOOT drive will disappear and a new disk drive called CIRCUITPY will appear.

If you haven't added any code to your board, the only file that will be present is boot_out.txt. This is absolutely normal! It's time for you to add your code.py and get started!

That's it, you're done! :)

PyPortal Default Files

Click below to download a zip of the files that shipped on the PyPortal or PyPortal Pynt.

PyPortal Default Files

PyPortal Pynt Default Files

As CircuitPython development continues and there are new releases, Adafruit will stop supporting older releases. Visit https://circuitpython.org/downloads to download the latest version of CircuitPython for your board. You must download the CircuitPython Library Bundle that matches your version of CircuitPython. Please update CircuitPython and then visit https://circuitpython.org/libraries to download the latest Library Bundle.

Each CircuitPython program you run needs to have a lot of information to work. The reason CircuitPython is so simple to use is that most of that information is stored in other files and works in the background. These files are called libraries. Some of them are built into CircuitPython. Others are stored on your CIRCUITPY drive in a folder called lib. Part of what makes CircuitPython so great is its ability to store code separately from the firmware itself. Storing code separately from the firmware makes it easier to update both the code you write and the libraries you depend.

Your board may ship with a lib folder already, it's in the base directory of the drive. If not, simply create the folder yourself. When you first install CircuitPython, an empty lib directory will be created for you.

CircuitPython libraries work in the same way as regular Python modules so the Python docs are an excellent reference for how it all should work. In Python terms, you can place our library files in the lib directory because it's part of the Python path by default.

One downside of this approach of separate libraries is that they are not built in. To use them, one needs to copy them to the CIRCUITPY drive before they can be used. Fortunately, there is a library bundle.

The bundle and the library releases on GitHub also feature optimized versions of the libraries with the .mpy file extension. These files take less space on the drive and have a smaller memory footprint as they are loaded.

Due to the regular updates and space constraints, Adafruit does not ship boards with the entire bundle. Therefore, you will need to load the libraries you need when you begin working with your board. You can find example code in the guides for your board that depends on external libraries.

Either way, as you start to explore CircuitPython, you'll want to know how to get libraries on board.

The Adafruit Learn Guide Project Bundle

The quickest and easiest way to get going with a project from the Adafruit Learn System is by utilising the Project Bundle. Most guides now have a Download Project Bundle button available at the top of the full code example embed. This button downloads all the necessary files, including images, etc., to get the guide project up and running. Simply click, open the resulting zip, copy over the right files, and you're good to go!

The first step is to find the Download Project Bundle button in the guide you're working on.

The Download Project Bundle button is only available on full demo code embedded from GitHub in a Learn guide. Code snippets will NOT have the button available.

When you copy the contents of the Project Bundle to your CIRCUITPY drive, it will replace all the existing content! If you don't want to lose anything, ensure you copy your current code to your computer before you copy over the new Project Bundle content!

The Download Project Bundle button downloads a zip file. This zip contains a series of directories, nested within which is the code.py, any applicable assets like images or audio, and the lib/ folder containing all the necessary libraries. The following zip was downloaded from the Piano in the Key of Lime guide.

The Piano in the Key of Lime guide was chosen as an example. That guide is specific to Circuit Playground Express, and cannot be used on all boards. Do not expect to download that exact bundle and have it work on your non-CPX microcontroller.

When you open the zip, you'll find some nested directories. Navigate through them until you find what you need. You'll eventually find a directory for your CircuitPython version (in this case, 7.x). In the version directory, you'll find the file and directory you need: code.py and lib/. Once you find the content you need, you can copy it all over to your CIRCUITPY drive, replacing any files already on the drive with the files from the freshly downloaded zip.

In some cases, there will be other files such as audio or images in the same directory as code.py and lib/. Make sure you include all the files when you copy things over!

Once you copy over all the relevant files, the project should begin running! If you find that the project is not running as expected, make sure you've copied ALL of the project files onto your microcontroller board.

That's all there is to using the Project Bundle!

The Adafruit CircuitPython Library Bundle

Adafruit provides CircuitPython libraries for much of the hardware they provide, including sensors, breakouts and more. To eliminate the need for searching for each library individually, the libraries are available together in the Adafruit CircuitPython Library Bundle. The bundle contains all the files needed to use each library.

Downloading the Adafruit CircuitPython Library Bundle

You can download the latest Adafruit CircuitPython Library Bundle release by clicking the button below. The libraries are being constantly updated and improved, so you'll always want to download the latest bundle.

Match up the bundle version with the version of CircuitPython you are running. For example, you would download the 6.x library bundle if you're running any version of CircuitPython 6, or the 7.x library bundle if you're running any version of CircuitPython 7, etc. If you mix libraries with major CircuitPython versions, you will get incompatible mpy errors due to changes in library interfaces possible during major version changes.

Click to visit circuitpython.org for the latest Adafruit CircuitPython Library Bundle

Download the bundle version that matches your CircuitPython firmware version. If you don't know the version, check the version info in boot_out.txt file on the CIRCUITPY drive, or the initial prompt in the CircuitPython REPL. For example, if you're running v7.0.0, download the 7.x library bundle.

There's also a py bundle which contains the uncompressed python files, you probably don't want that unless you are doing advanced work on libraries.

The CircuitPython Community Library Bundle

The CircuitPython Community Library Bundle is made up of libraries written and provided by members of the CircuitPython community. These libraries are often written when community members encountered hardware not supported in the Adafruit Bundle, or to support a personal project. The authors all chose to submit these libraries to the Community Bundle make them available to the community.

These libraries are maintained by their authors and are not supported by Adafruit. As you would with any library, if you run into problems, feel free to file an issue on the GitHub repo for the library. Bear in mind, though, that most of these libraries are supported by a single person and you should be patient about receiving a response. Remember, these folks are not paid by Adafruit, and are volunteering their personal time when possible to provide support.

Downloading the CircuitPython Community Library Bundle

You can download the latest CircuitPython Community Library Bundle release by clicking the button below. The libraries are being constantly updated and improved, so you'll always want to download the latest bundle.

Click for the latest CircuitPython Community Library Bundle release

The link takes you to the latest release of the CircuitPython Community Library Bundle on GitHub. There are multiple versions of the bundle available. Download the bundle version that matches your CircuitPython firmware version. If you don't know the version, check the version info in boot_out.txt file on the CIRCUITPY drive, or the initial prompt in the CircuitPython REPL. For example, if you're running v7.0.0, download the 7.x library bundle.

Understanding the Bundle

After downloading the zip, extract its contents. This is usually done by double clicking on the zip. On Mac OSX, it places the file in the same directory as the zip.

Open the bundle folder. Inside you'll find two information files, and two folders. One folder is the lib bundle, and the other folder is the examples bundle.

Now open the lib folder. When you open the folder, you'll see a large number of .mpy files, and folders.

Example Files

All example files from each library are now included in the bundles in an examples directory (as seen above), as well as an examples-only bundle. These are included for two main reasons:

Allow for quick testing of devices.
Provide an example base of code, that is easily built upon for individualized purposes.

circuitpython_WtCP_examples_bundle_directory_contents.png

Copying Libraries to Your Board

First open the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive. Then, open the lib folder you extracted from the downloaded zip. Inside you'll find a number of folders and .mpy files. Find the library you'd like to use, and copy it to the lib folder on CIRCUITPY.

If the library is a directory with multiple .mpy files in it, be sure to copy the entire folder to CIRCUITPY/lib.

This also applies to example files. Open the examples folder you extracted from the downloaded zip, and copy the applicable file to your CIRCUITPY drive. Then, rename it to code.py to run it.

If a library has multiple .mpy files contained in a folder, be sure to copy the entire folder to CIRCUITPY/lib.

Understanding Which Libraries to Install

You now know how to load libraries on to your CircuitPython-compatible microcontroller board. You may now be wondering, how do you know which libraries you need to install? Unfortunately, it's not always straightforward. Fortunately, there is an obvious place to start, and a relatively simple way to figure out the rest. First up: the best place to start.

When you look at most CircuitPython examples, you'll see they begin with one or more import statements. These typically look like the following:

import library_or_module

However, import statements can also sometimes look like the following:

from library_or_module import name
from library_or_module.subpackage import name
from library_or_module import name as local_name

They can also have more complicated formats, such as including a try / except block, etc.

The important thing to know is that an import statement will always include the name of the module or library that you're importing.

Therefore, the best place to start is by reading through the import statements.

Here is an example import list for you to work with in this section. There is no setup or other code shown here, as the purpose of this section involves only the import list.

import time
import board
import neopixel
import adafruit_lis3dh
import usb_hid
from adafruit_hid.consumer_control import ConsumerControl
from adafruit_hid.consumer_control_code import ConsumerControlCode

import time
import board
import neopixel
import adafruit_lis3dh
import usb_hid
from adafruit_hid.consumer_control import ConsumerControl
from adafruit_hid.consumer_control_code import ConsumerControlCode

Keep in mind, not all imported items are libraries. Some of them are almost always built-in CircuitPython modules. How do you know the difference? Time to visit the REPL.

In the Interacting with the REPL section on The REPL page in this guide, the help("modules") command is discussed. This command provides a list of all of the built-in modules available in CircuitPython for your board. So, if you connect to the serial console on your board, and enter the REPL, you can run help("modules") to see what modules are available for your board. Then, as you read through the import statements, you can, for the purposes of figuring out which libraries to load, ignore the statement that import modules.

The following is the list of modules built into CircuitPython for the Feather RP2040. Your list may look similar or be anything down to a significant subset of this list for smaller boards.

circuitpython_WtCP_CP_libs_help_modules_feather_rp2040.png

Now that you know what you're looking for, it's time to read through the import statements. The first two, time and board, are on the modules list above, so they're built-in.

The next one, neopixel, is not on the module list. That means it's your first library! So, you would head over to the bundle zip you downloaded, and search for neopixel. There is a neopixel.mpy file in the bundle zip. Copy it over to the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive. The following one, adafruit_lis3dh, is also not on the module list. Follow the same process for adafruit_lis3dh, where you'll find adafruit_lis3dh.mpy, and copy that over.

The fifth one is usb_hid, and it is in the modules list, so it is built in. Often all of the built-in modules come first in the import list, but sometimes they don't! Don't assume that everything after the first library is also a library, and verify each import with the modules list to be sure. Otherwise, you'll search the bundle and come up empty!

The final two imports are not as clear. Remember, when import statements are formatted like this, the first thing after the from is the library name. In this case, the library name is adafruit_hid. A search of the bundle will find an adafruit_hid folder. When a library is a folder, you must copy the entire folder and its contents as it is in the bundle to the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive. In this case, you would copy the entire adafruit_hid folder to your CIRCUITPY/lib folder.

Notice that there are two imports that begin with adafruit_hid. Sometimes you will need to import more than one thing from the same library. Regardless of how many times you import the same library, you only need to load the library by copying over the adafruit_hid folder once.

That is how you can use your example code to figure out what libraries to load on your CircuitPython-compatible board!

There are cases, however, where libraries require other libraries internally. The internally required library is called a dependency. In the event of library dependencies, the easiest way to figure out what other libraries are required is to connect to the serial console and follow along with the ImportError printed there. The following is a very simple example of an ImportError, but the concept is the same for any missing library.

Example: `ImportError` Due to Missing Library

If you choose to load libraries as you need them, or you're starting fresh with an existing example, you may end up with code that tries to use a library you haven't yet loaded. This section will demonstrate what happens when you try to utilise a library that you don't have loaded on your board, and cover the steps required to resolve the issue.

This demonstration will only return an error if you do not have the required library loaded into the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive.

Let's use a modified version of the Blink example.

import board
import time
import simpleio

led = simpleio.DigitalOut(board.LED)

while True:
    led.value = True
    time.sleep(0.5)
    led.value = False
    time.sleep(0.5)

import board
import time
import simpleio

led = simpleio.DigitalOut(board.LED)

while True:
    led.value = True
    time.sleep(0.5)
    led.value = False
    time.sleep(0.5)

Save this file. Nothing happens to your board. Let's check the serial console to see what's going on.

You have an ImportError. It says there is no module named 'simpleio'. That's the one you just included in your code!

Click the link above to download the correct bundle. Extract the lib folder from the downloaded bundle file. Scroll down to find simpleio.mpy. This is the library file you're looking for! Follow the steps above to load an individual library file.

The LED starts blinking again! Let's check the serial console.

circuitpython_WtCP_CP_libraries_ImportError_resolved.png

No errors! Excellent. You've successfully resolved an ImportError!

If you run into this error in the future, follow along with the steps above and choose the library that matches the one you're missing.

Library Install on Non-Express Boards

If you have an M0 non-Express board such as Trinket M0, Gemma M0, QT Py M0, or one of the M0 Trinkeys, you'll want to follow the same steps in the example above to install libraries as you need them. Remember, you don't need to wait for an ImportError if you know what library you added to your code. Open the library bundle you downloaded, find the library you need, and drag it to the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive.

You can still end up running out of space on your M0 non-Express board even if you only load libraries as you need them. There are a number of steps you can use to try to resolve this issue. You'll find suggestions on the Troubleshooting page.

Updating CircuitPython Libraries and Examples

Libraries and examples are updated from time to time, and it's important to update the files you have on your CIRCUITPY drive.

To update a single library or example, follow the same steps above. When you drag the library file to your lib folder, it will ask if you want to replace it. Say yes. That's it!

A new library bundle is released every time there's an update to a library. Updates include things like bug fixes and new features. It's important to check in every so often to see if the libraries you're using have been updated.

CircUp CLI Tool

There is a command line interface (CLI) utility called CircUp that can be used to easily install and update libraries on your device. Follow the directions on the install page within the CircUp learn guide. Once you've got it installed you run the command circup update in a terminal to interactively update all libraries on the connected CircuitPython device. See the usage page in the CircUp guide for a full list of functionality

Location

In the code.py file (which you will have renamed from electioncal.py), you can change the location for which you want to display the election data in this lines:

# Change this to your state and county, replacing spaces for underscores and in lowercase
STATE="new_york"
COUNTY="new_york"

# Change this to your state and county, replacing spaces for underscores and in lowercase
STATE="new_york"
COUNTY="new_york"

Adafruit IO Time Server

In order to get the precise time, our project will query the Adafruit IO Internet of Things service for the time. Adafruit IO is absolutely free to use, but you'll need to log in with your Adafruit account to use it. If you don't already have an Adafruit login, create one here.

If you haven't used Adafruit IO before, check out this guide for more info.

Once you have logged into your account, there are two pieces of information you'll need to place in your secrets.py file: Adafruit IO username, and Adafruit IO key. Head to io.adafruit.com and simply click the View AIO Key link on the left hand side of the Adafruit IO page to get this information.

Then, add them to the secrets.py file like this:

secrets = {
    'ssid' : 'your_wifi_ssid',
    'password' : 'your_wifi_password',
    'aio_username' : '_your_aio_username_',
    'aio_key' : '_your_big_huge_super_long_aio_key_'
}

secrets = {
    'ssid' : 'your_wifi_ssid',
    'password' : 'your_wifi_password',
    'aio_username' : '_your_aio_username_',
    'aio_key' : '_your_big_huge_super_long_aio_key_'
}

Installing Project Code

To use with CircuitPython, you need to first install a few libraries, into the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive. Then you need to update code.py with the example script.

Thankfully, we can do this in one go. In the example below, click the Download Project Bundle button below to download the necessary libraries and the code.py file in a zip file. Extract the contents of the zip file, open the directory PyPortal_Electioncal_US/ and then click on the directory that matches the version of CircuitPython you're using and copy the contents of that directory to your CIRCUITPY drive.

Your CIRCUITPY drive should now look similar to the following image:

Download Project Bundle

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2020 Alvaro Figueroa for Adafruit Industries
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT

import sys
import time
import board
from adafruit_pyportal import PyPortal
cwd = ("/"+__file__).rsplit('/', 1)[0] # the current working directory (where this file is)
sys.path.append(cwd)
import electioncal_graphics  # pylint: disable=wrong-import-position

# Get wifi details and more from a secrets.py file
try:
    from secrets import secrets # pylint: disable=unused-import
except ImportError:
    print("WiFi secrets are kept in secrets.py, please add them there!")
    raise

# Change this to your state and county, replacing spaces for underscores and in lowercase
STATE="new_york"
COUNTY="new_york"

DATA_SOURCE = "https://electioncal.us/en/" + STATE +"/" + COUNTY + "/voter.json"
DATA_LOCATION = []

# Initialize the pyportal object and let us know what data to fetch and where
# to display it
pyportal = PyPortal(url=DATA_SOURCE,
                    json_path=DATA_LOCATION,
                    status_neopixel=board.NEOPIXEL,
                    default_bg=0x000000)


gfx = electioncal_graphics.Electioncal_Graphics(pyportal.splash, am_pm=True)
display_refresh = None
while True:
    # only query the online time once per hour (and on first run)
    if (not display_refresh) or (time.monotonic() - display_refresh) > 3600:
        try:
            print("Getting time from internet!")
            pyportal.get_local_time()
            display_refresh = time.monotonic()
        except RuntimeError as e:
            print("Some error occured, retrying! -", e)
            continue

        try:
            value = pyportal.fetch()
            #print("Response is", value)
            gfx.load_data(value)
        except RuntimeError as e:
            print("Some error occured, retrying! -", e)
            continue
    try:
        gfx.elections_cycle()
    except RuntimeError as e:
        print("Some error ocurred, retrying! -", e)
        continue

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2020 Alvaro Figueroa for Adafruit Industries
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT

import sys
import time
import board
from adafruit_pyportal import PyPortal
cwd = ("/"+__file__).rsplit('/', 1)[0] # the current working directory (where this file is)
sys.path.append(cwd)
import electioncal_graphics  # pylint: disable=wrong-import-position

# Get wifi details and more from a secrets.py file
try:
    from secrets import secrets # pylint: disable=unused-import
except ImportError:
    print("WiFi secrets are kept in secrets.py, please add them there!")
    raise

# Change this to your state and county, replacing spaces for underscores and in lowercase
STATE="new_york"
COUNTY="new_york"

DATA_SOURCE = "https://electioncal.us/en/" + STATE +"/" + COUNTY + "/voter.json"
DATA_LOCATION = []

# Initialize the pyportal object and let us know what data to fetch and where
# to display it
pyportal = PyPortal(url=DATA_SOURCE,
                    json_path=DATA_LOCATION,
                    status_neopixel=board.NEOPIXEL,
                    default_bg=0x000000)


gfx = electioncal_graphics.Electioncal_Graphics(pyportal.splash, am_pm=True)
display_refresh = None
while True:
    # only query the online time once per hour (and on first run)
    if (not display_refresh) or (time.monotonic() - display_refresh) > 3600:
        try:
            print("Getting time from internet!")
            pyportal.get_local_time()
            display_refresh = time.monotonic()
        except RuntimeError as e:
            print("Some error occured, retrying! -", e)
            continue

        try:
            value = pyportal.fetch()
            #print("Response is", value)
            gfx.load_data(value)
        except RuntimeError as e:
            print("Some error occured, retrying! -", e)
            continue
    try:
        gfx.elections_cycle()
    except RuntimeError as e:
        print("Some error ocurred, retrying! -", e)
        continue

If you run into any errors, such as "ImportError: no module named `adafruit_display_text.label`" be sure to update your libraries to the latest release bundle!

How It Works

The PyPortal Electioncal US has a few steps it takes to provide you with the information desired. It has a boot-up screen, a nice simple background, and multiple fonts for displaying the election dates.

PyPortal Constructor

When setting up the pyportal constructor, we are providing it with these things:

url to query
json_path to traverse and find the key:value pairs we need
default_bg default background color

Background

First, it displays a bitmap graphic as the screen's startup background while getting ready to download the Election dates. This is a 320 x 240 pixel RGB 16-bit raster graphic in .bmp format.

Time

Next, the program connects through the WiFi to get the local time via the adafruit.io server, for which we will display today's date at the bottom of the screen, to give you better context of the election dates.

API Query and JSON

At the top of this page, you configured:

DATA_SOURCE = "https://electioncal.us/en/" + STATE +"/" + COUNTY + "/voter.json"

This, with the STATE and COUNTY you defined, will turn into something like (New York County, New York State in this example):

https://electioncal.us/en/new_york/new_york/voter.json

When this query is complete, it returns a JSON file that looks like this:

{
  "version": 0,
  "name": null,
  "description": null,
  "dates": 
  	[
      {
        "date": "2020-04-28", 
        "name": "Presidential Primary",
        "original_date": "2020-04-28", 
        "state": "New York", 
        "county": "New York County",
        "key": "20200428", 
        "type": "election"
      }, 
      {
        "state": "New York", 
        "county": "New York County", 
        "name": "Mail voter registration",
        "type": "reminder",
        "election_key": "20200623",
        "subtype": "registration.received_by",
        "date": "2020-05-26", 
        "postmark_too_late": true,
        "deadline_date": "2020-06-03", 
        "explanation": "Voter registration must be received by June 3rd."
      }
    ]
}

{
  "version": 0,
  "name": null,
  "description": null,
  "dates": 
  	[
      {
        "date": "2020-04-28", 
        "name": "Presidential Primary",
        "original_date": "2020-04-28", 
        "state": "New York", 
        "county": "New York County",
        "key": "20200428", 
        "type": "election"
      }, 
      {
        "state": "New York", 
        "county": "New York County", 
        "name": "Mail voter registration",
        "type": "reminder",
        "election_key": "20200623",
        "subtype": "registration.received_by",
        "date": "2020-05-26", 
        "postmark_too_late": true,
        "deadline_date": "2020-06-03", 
        "explanation": "Voter registration must be received by June 3rd."
      }
    ]
}

Here is the same file beautified with the Firefox browser's built in tools (You can also use online code "beautifiers" such as https://codebeautify.org/jsonviewer or http://jsonviewer.stack.hu) :

Fetch

With the PyPortal set up, we can then use pyportal.fetch() and then from the screen object we call load_data() to load the JSON data to a way that is easy to pass through all the dates.

All of the heavy lifting of parsing that data and displaying it as text or bitmaps is done in the electioncal_graphics.py code.

JSON Traversal

The JSON file is formatted in a way that makes it easy to traverse the hierarchy and parse the data. In it, you'll see keys, such as state, county, name, type and date, and their respective values. So, here are some key : value pairs we care about:

state: "New York"
county: "New York County"
name: "Presidential Primary"
date: "2020-04-28"

In order to fetch this data from the file, we need to be able to describe their locations in the file hierarchically. This is helpful, for example, in differentiating between the 'name' value that you have in the Presidential Primary and the 'name' of the Mail voter registration. To avoid name clashing, we rely on JSON traversal.

In the electioncal_graphics.py file, you'll see how this is done. For example, the first date is found in this hierarchy of the JSON file: ["dates"][0]["date"].

In this case the number 0 is quite important, as it has the sub-tree that is relevant for the first, date, but if you change it to a number such as 1 or 2, you will print the second and third date. Please note that the counter starts at zero.

Depending of the STATE and COUNTY you configured, you will have several election dates, so the program then tries to replace this number by [i], so that we can display not one date but many, and cycle them through the screen.

Font

The data is displayed as text created with bitmapped fonts to overlay on top of the background. The fonts used here are bitmap fonts made from the Arial typeface. You can learn more about converting type in this guide.

Graphics

Let's have a look at how the electioncal_graphics.py code places the elements on screen. Below, we can see the icon and text that are displayed. The items in quotes are the key names from the JSON file, and their values are what we see displayed using the CircuitPython label from the displayio library.

Download Project Bundle