Keybow 2040 CircuitPython

This CircuitPython library is for the RP2040-powered Keybow 2040 from Pimoroni, a 16-key mini mechanical keyboard with RGB backlit keys. Find out more about Keybow 2040 at the link below.

Learn more about Keybow 2040 at pimoroni.com

The library abstracts away most of the complexity of having to check pin states, and interact with the IS31FL3731 LED driver library, and exposes classes for individual keys and the whole Keybow (a collection of Key instances).

Getting started quickly!

You'll need to grab the latest version of Adafruit's Keybow 2040-flavoured CircuitPython, from the link below.

Download the Adafruit CircuitPython binary for Keybow 2040

Unplug your Keybow 2040's USB-C cable, press and hold the button on the top edge of Keybow 2040 while plugging the USB-C cable back into your computer to mount it as a drive (it should show up as RPI-RP2 or something similar).

Drag and drop the adafruit-circuitpython-pimoroni_keybow2040-en_US-XXXXX.uf2 file that you downloaded onto the drive and it should reboot and load the CircuitPython firmware. The drive should now show up as CIRCUITPY.

The Adafruit IS31FL3731 LED driver library for CircuitPython is a prequisite for this Keybow 2040 library, so you'll need to download it from GitHub at the link below, and then drop the adafruit_is31fl3731 folder into the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive.

Download the Adafruit IS31FL3731 CircuitPython library

Finally, drop the keybow2040.py file from this library into the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive also, and you're all set!

Pick one of the examples (I'd suggest the reactive.press.py example to begin), copy the code, and save it in the code.py file on your CIRCUITPY drive using your favourite text editor. As soon as you save the code.py file, or make any other changes, then it should load up and run the code!

Index

• Library functionality
  • Imports and setup
  • The Keybow class
  • An interlude on timing!
  • Key presses
  • LEDs!
  • LED sleep
  • Attaching functions to keys with decorators
  • Key combos
• USB HID
  • Setup
  • Sending key presses
  • Sending strings of text
• USB MIDI
  • Setup
  • Sending MIDI notes

Library functionality

This section covers most of the functionality of the library itself, without delving into additional functions like USB MIDI or HID (they're both covered later!)

Imports and setup

All of your programs will need to start with the following:

import board
from keybow2040 import Keybow2040

i2c = board.I2C()
keybow = Keybow2040(i2c)

First, this imports the board module which contains all of the pin objects for the Keybow 2040 board, including board.I2C, a quick way to set up the I2C bus, which is needed for the IS31FL3731 LED driver library used in this Keybow 2040 library.

The Keybow2040() class, imported from the keybow2040 module, is instantiated and passed the i2c bus object. Instantiating this sets up all of the pins, keys, and LEDs, and provides access to all of the attributes and methods associated with it.

The Keybow class

The Keybow class exposes a number of handy attributes and methods. The main one you'll be interested in is the .keys attribute, which is a list of Key class instances, one for each key.

keys = keybow.keys

The indices of the keys in that list correspond to their position on the keypad, staring from the bottom left corner (when the USB connector is at the top), which is key 0, going upwards in columns, and ending at the top right corner, which is key 15.

More about the Key class later...

A super important method of the Keybow class is .update() method. It updates all of the keys, key states, and other attributes like the time of the last key press, and sleep state of the LEDs.

You need to call this method on your Keybow class at the very start of each iteration of your program's main loop, as follows:

while True:
    keybow.update()

An interlude on timing!

Another super important thing is not to include any time.sleep()s in your main loop! Doing so will ruin the latency and mean that you'll miss key press events. Just don't do it.

If you need introduce timed events, then you have to go about it in a slightly (!!) roundabout fashion, by using time.monotonic() a constantly incremented count of seconds elapsed, and use it to check the time elapsed since your last event, for example you could do this inside your while True loop:

time_interval = 10

# An event just happened!

time_last_fired = time.monotonic()
time_elapsed = 0

# ... some iterations later

time_elapsed = time.monotonic() - time_last_fired

if time_elapsed > time_interval:
    # Fire your event again!

There's a handy keybow.time_of_last_press attribute that allows you to quickly check if a certain amount of time has elapsed since any key press, and that attribute gets updated every time keybow.update() is called.

Key presses

There are a few ways that you can go about detecting key presses, some global methods on the Keybow class instance, and some on the Key class instances themselves.

Keybow class methods for detecting presses and key states

keybow.get_states() will return a list of the state of all of the keys, in order, with a state of 0 being not pressed, and 1 being pressed. You can then loop through that list to do whatever you like.

keybow.get_pressed() will return a list of the key numbers (indices in the list of keys) that are currently pressed. If you only care about key presses, then this is an efficient way to do things, especially since you have all the key numbers in a list.

keybow.any_pressed() returns a Boolean (True/False) that tells you whether any keys are currently being pressed. Handy if you want to attach a behaviour to all of the keys, which this is effectively a proxy for.

keybow.none_pressed() is similar to .any_pressed(), in that it returns a Boolean also, but... you guessed it, it returns True if no keys are being pressed, and False if any keys are pressed.

Key class methods for detecting key presses

If we want to check whether key 0 is pressed, we can do so as follows:

keys = keybow.keys()

while True:
    keybow.update()

    if keys[0].pressed:
        # Do something!

The .pressed attribute returns a Boolean that is True if the key is pressed and False if it is not pressed.

key.state is another way to check the state of a key. It will equal 1 if the key is pressed and 0 if it is not pressed.

If you want to attach an additional behaviour to your key, you can use key.held to check if a key is being key rather than being pressed and released quickly. It returns True if the key is held and False if it is not.

The default hold time (after which key.held is True) for all of the keys is 0.75 seconds, but you can change key.hold_time to adjust this to your liking, on a per key basis.

This means that we could extend the example above to be:

keys = keybow.keys()

while True:
    keybow.update()

    if keys[0].pressed:
        # Do something!

    if keys[0].held:
        # Do something else!

The reactive-press.py example shows in more detail how to handle key presses.

LEDs!

LEDs can be set either globally for all keys, using the Keybow class instance, or on a per-key basis, either through the Keybow class, or using a Key class instance.

To set all of the keys to the same colour, you can use the .set_all() method of the Keybow class, to which you pass three 0-255 integers for red, green, and blue. For example, to set all of the keys to magenta:

keybow.set_all(255, 0, 255)

To set an individal key through your Keybow class instance, you can do as follows, to set key 0 to white:

keybow.set_led(0, 255, 255, 255)

To set the colour on the key itself, you could do as follows, again to set key 0 to white:

keybow.keys[0].set_led(255, 255, 255)

A key retains its RGB value, even if it is turned off, so once a key has its colour set with key.rgb = (255, 0, 0) for example, you can turn it off using key.led_off() or even key.set_led(0, 0, 0) and then when you turn it back on with key.led_on(), then it will still be red when it comes back on.

As a convenience, and to avoid having to check key.lit, there is a key.toggle_led() method that will toggle the current state of the key's LED (on to off, and vice versa).

There's a handy hsv_to_rgb() function that can be imported from the keybow2040 module to convert an HSV colour (a tuple of floats from 0.0 to 1.0) to an RGB colour (a tuple of integers from 0 to 255), as follows:

from keybow2040 import hsv_to_rgb

h = 0.5  # Hue
s = 1.0  # Saturation
v = 1.0  # Value

r, g, b = hsv_to_rgb(h, s, v)

The rainbow.py example shows a more complex example of how to animate the keys' LEDs, including the use of the hsv_to_rgb() function.

LED sleep

The Keybow class has an .led_sleep_enabled attribute that is disabled (set to False) by default, and an .led_sleep_time attribute (set to 60 seconds by default) that determines how many seconds need to elapse before LED sleep is triggered and the LEDs turn off.

The time elapsed since the last key press is constantly updated when keybow.update() is called in your main loop, and if the .led_sleep_time is exceeded then LED sleep is triggered.

Because keys retain their RGB values when toggled off, when asleep, a tap on any key will wake all of the LEDs up at their last state before sleep.

Enabling LED sleep with a sleep time of 10 seconds could be done as simply as:

keybow.led_sleep_enabled = True
keybow.led_sleep_time = 10

There's also a .sleeping attribute that returns a Boolean, that you can check to see whether the LEDs are sleeping or not.

Attaching functions to keys with decorators

There are three decorators that can be attached to functions to link that function to, i) a key press, ii) a key release, or iii) a key hold.

Here's an example of how you could attach a decorator to a function that lights up that key yellow when it is pressed, turns all of the LEDs on when held, and turns them all off when released:

import board
from keybow2040 import Keybow2040

i2c = board.I2C()
keybow = Keybow2040(i2c)
keys = keybow.keys

key = keys[0]
rgb = (255, 255, 0)
key.rgb = rgb

@keybow.on_press(key)
def press_handler(key):
    key.led_on()

@keybow.on_release(key)
def release_handler(key):
    keybow.set_all(0, 0, 0)

@keybow.on_hold(key)
def hold_handler(key):
    keybow.set_all(*rgb)

while True:
    keybow.update()

The decorators.py example has another example of how to use the .on_hold() decorator to toggle LEDs on and off when a key is held.

Key combos

Key combos can provide a way to add additional behaviours to keys that only get triggered if a combination of keys is pressed. The best way to achieve this is using the .held attribute of a key, meaning that the key can also have a .pressed behaviour too.

Here's a brief example of how you could do this inside your main loop, with key 0 as the modifier key, and key 1 as the action key:

keys = keybow.keys

modifier_key = keys[0]
action_key = keys[1]

while True:
    keybow.update()

    if modifier_key.held and action_key.pressed:
        # Do something!

Of course, you could chain these together, to require two modifer keys to be held and a third to be pressed, and so on...

The colour-picker.py example has an example of using a modifier key to change the hue of the keys.

USB HID

This covers setting up a USB HID keyboard and linking physical key presses to keyboard key presses on a connected computer.

Setup

USB HID requires the adafruit_hid CircuitPython library. Download it from the link below and drop the adafruit_hid folder into the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive.

Download the Adafruit HID CircuitPython library

You'll need to connect your Keybow to a computer using a USB cable, just like you would with a regular USB keyboard.

Sending key presses

Here's an example of setting up a keyboard object and sending a 0 key press when key 0 is pressed, using an .on_press() decorator:

import board
from keybow2040 import Keybow2040

import usb_hid
from adafruit_hid.keyboard import Keyboard
from adafruit_hid.keyboard_layout_us import KeyboardLayoutUS
from adafruit_hid.keycode import Keycode

i2c = board.I2C()
keybow = Keybow2040(i2c)
keys = keybow.keys

keyboard = Keyboard(usb_hid.devices)
layout = KeyboardLayoutUS(keyboard)

key = keys[0]

@keybow.on_press(key)
def press_handler(key):
    keyboard.send(Keycode.ZERO)

while True:
    keybow.update()

You can find a list of all of the keycodes available at the HID CircuitPython library documentation here.

If you wanted to take this a bit further and make a full keymap for your keyboard, then you could create a list of 16 different keycodes and then use the number of the key press registered by the press_handler function as an index into your keymap to get the keycode to send for each key.

import board
from keybow2040 import Keybow2040

import usb_hid
from adafruit_hid.keyboard import Keyboard
from adafruit_hid.keyboard_layout_us import KeyboardLayoutUS
from adafruit_hid.keycode import Keycode

i2c = board.I2C()
keybow = Keybow2040(i2c)
keys = keybow.keys

keyboard = Keyboard(usb_hid.devices)
layout = KeyboardLayoutUS(keyboard)

keymap =    [Keycode.ZERO,
             Keycode.ONE,
             Keycode.TWO,
             Keycode.THREE,
             Keycode.FOUR,
             Keycode.FIVE,
             Keycode.SIX,
             Keycode.SEVEN,
             Keycode.EIGHT,
             Keycode.NINE,
             Keycode.A,
             Keycode.B,
             Keycode.C,
             Keycode.D,
             Keycode.E,
             Keycode.F]

for key in keys:
    @keybow.on_press(key)
    def press_handler(key):
        keycode = keymap[key.number]
        keyboard.send(keycode)

while True:
    keybow.update()

This code is available in the hid-keys-simple.py example.

As well as sending a single keypress, you can send multiple keypresses at once, simply by adding them as additional argumemnts to keyboard.send(), e.g. keyboard.send(Keycode.A, Keycode.B) and so on.

Sending strings of text

Rather than the incovenience of sending multiple keycodes using keyboard.send(), there's a different method to send whole strings of text at once, using the layout object we created.

import board
from keybow2040 import Keybow2040

import usb_hid
from adafruit_hid.keyboard import Keyboard
from adafruit_hid.keyboard_layout_us import KeyboardLayoutUS
from adafruit_hid.keycode import Keycode

i2c = board.I2C()
keybow = Keybow2040(i2c)
keys = keybow.keys

keyboard = Keyboard(usb_hid.devices)
layout = KeyboardLayoutUS(keyboard)

key = keys[0]

@keybow.on_press(key)
def press_handler(key):
    layout.write("Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.")

while True:
    keybow.update()

A press of key 0 will send that whole string of text at once!

Be aware that strings sent like that take a little while to virtually "type", so you might want to incorporate a delay using keybow.time_of_last_press, and then check against a time_elapsed variable created with time_elapsed = time.monotonic() - keybow.time_of_last_press.

Also, be aware that the Adafruit HID CircuitPython library only currently supports US Keyboard layouts, so you'll have to work around that and map any keycodes that differ from their US counterpart to whatever your is.

USB MIDI

This covers basic MIDI note messages and how to link them to key presses.

Setup

USB MIDI requires the adafruit_midi CircuitPython library. Download it from the link below and then drop the adafruit_midi folder into the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive.

Download the Adafruit MIDI CircuitPython library

You'll need to connect your Keybow 2040 with a USB cable to a computer running a software synth or DAW like Ableton Live, to a hardware synth that accepts USB MIDI, or through a MIDI interface that will convert the USB MIDI messages to regular serial MIDI through a DIN connector.

Using USB MIDI, Keybow 2040 shows up as a device with the name Keybow 2040 (CircuitPython usb midi.ports[1])

In my testing, Keybow 2040 works with the Teenage Engineering OP-Z quite nicely.

Sending MIDI notes

Here's a complete, minimal example of how to send a single MIDI note (middle C, or MIDI note number 60) when key 0 is pressed, sending a note on message when pressed and a note off message when released.

import board
from keybow2040 import Keybow2040

import usb_midi
import adafruit_midi
from adafruit_midi.note_off import NoteOff
from adafruit_midi.note_on import NoteOn

i2c = board.I2C()
keybow = Keybow2040(i2c)
keys = keybow.keys

midi = adafruit_midi.MIDI(midi_out=usb_midi.ports[1], out_channel=0)

key = keys[0]
note = 60
velocity = 127

was_pressed = False

while True:
    keybow.update()

    if key.pressed:
        midi.send(NoteOn(note, velocity))
        was_pressed = True
    elif not key.pressed and was_pressed:
        midi.send(NoteOff(note, 0))
        was_pressed = False

There'a more complete example of how to set up all of Keybow's keys with associated MIDI notes using decorators in the midi-keys.py example.

The example above, and the midi-keys.py example both send notes on MIDI channel 0 (all channels), but you can set this to a specific channel, if you like, by changing out_channel= when you instantiate your midi object.