DIGIPI Ham Software ILI9486 Screen Configuration

Digipi Ham Software with ILI9846 Screen

I recently bought an ICOM 7300 and have been playing with all the digitals modes on Windows, Mac, and Linux and various hunks of software.  I’m a Raspberry Pi geek and found a distribution called DIGIPI by KM6LYW.   The download is behind a paywall and you can get it for as little as $1.  Anyway, DIGIPI can also be used with server screens and the one I bought is the ILI9486.

That was pretty great and it works once you select it during the Initialization phase.  I found a file to 3D print a case and lo and behold my display was upside down.

NOTE:  This blog only deals with flipping the screen on the ILI9486 screen.  It is assumed that you have DIGIPI running and ran into the same issue I did!

Flip That Screen

Usually something like this is pretty easy.  Usually in the code somewhere is a line that says:

rotate=90 (or 180, or 270)

Not so with the ILI9486.  I googled all night long before I found the magic.

Open a terminal by selecting “shell” in the main window.

Terminal Shell

Now do this

sudo remount
nano digibanner.py

Scroll down to the ILI9486 section and find the following code:

elif displaytype == 'ili9486':
   ## Largest ili9486 display, no buttons, (320x480
   from spidev import SpiDev
   spi = SpiDev(0,0)
   spi.mode = 0b10
   spi.max_speed_hz = 48000000
   disp = ili9486.ILI9486(
       spi=spi,
       rst=25,
       dc=24,
       origin=ili9486.Origin.LOWER_RIGHT
   ).begin()
   disp.invert()
   fontbump = 10

Find the part that I have highlighted in red which says “LOWER_RIGHT”.

Change that to “UPPER_LEFT”

elif displaytype == 'ili9486':
   ## Largest ili9486 display, no buttons, (320x480
   from spidev import SpiDev
   spi = SpiDev(0,0)
   spi.mode = 0b10
   spi.max_speed_hz = 48000000
   disp = ili9486.ILI9486(
       spi=spi,
       rst=25,
       dc=24,
       origin=ili9486.Origin.UPPER_LEFT
   ).begin()
   disp.invert()
   fontbump = 10

Hit CTL +X then Y to save that file. Reboot.

The developer of DIGIPI said to also do the same change to the file named direwatch.py for the aprs/ax25 modes.

And Bob will now and forever be your Uncle.   My Pi with screen is just below the monitor and my shiny new ICOM IC-7300 is in business decoding some FT8.

Working like a champ

Problem solved.  Many thanks to KM6LYW for the DIGIPI software.