palettes
August 23, 2026 · View on GitHub
🌈 Color Wheels
Generate continuous color ramps and rainbow gradients with configurable saturation and hue lengths.
🎯 Material Design
Access standardized semantic UI palettes with shades from 50 to 900 for modern themes and widgets.
🧊 Color Cubes
Evenly distributed 8, 27, 64, and 125 color spaces optimized for dithering and quantized graphics.
🔄 Byte-Swapping
First-class 16-bit RGB565 byte swapping (swapped=True) for direct SPI panel compatibility.
🚀 Quick Install
=== "MicroPython (MIP)"
```python
import mip
mip.install("palettes", index="https://PyDevices.github.io/mip")
```
=== "CPython (TestPyPI)"
```bash
pip install -i https://test.pypi.org/simple/ \
--extra-index-url https://pypi.org/simple/ pydevices-palettes
```
=== "CircuitPython"
Copy the `palettes/` folder from the repository into your board's `CIRCUITPY/lib/` folder.
=== "PyScript / Pyodide"
In PyScript headers or Pyodide configurations, declare:
```python
import micropip
await micropip.install(
"pydevices-palettes", index_urls="https://test.pypi.org/simple/"
)
from palettes import get_palette
```
The wheel is named `pydevices-palettes`; the module you import is
`palettes`. On MicroPython the MIP package name is `palettes`
(`mip.install("palettes", index="https://PyDevices.github.io/mip")`).
💻 Live Interactive Demo
Try tweaking the palette parameters below. Click ▶ Run to execute the code with direct MicroPython WebAssembly:
display = AutoDisplay(width=320, height=240, canvas_id=CANVAS_ID) display.fill(0x1082)
Generate a 256-color wheel palette
palette = get_palette("wheel", color_depth=16, length=256, saturation=1.0)
Draw vertical color bars
bar_width = display.width // 32 for i in range(32): color = palette[i * 8] display.fill_rect(i * bar_width, 20, bar_width, 100, color)
Material Design amber ramp
md = get_palette("material_design", color_depth=16) shades = [ md.AMBER_S50, md.AMBER_S100, md.AMBER_S200, md.AMBER_S300, md.AMBER_S400, md.AMBER_S500, md.AMBER_S600, md.AMBER_S700, md.AMBER_S800, md.AMBER_S900 ] for i, color in enumerate(shades): display.fill_rect(i * 30 + 10, 140, 26, 60, color)
display.show() print("Drawn 32 color wheel bands and 10 Material Design amber shades!")
📖 Practical Usage Pattern
Construct a palette once and index it inside your application draw loop:
from palettes import get_palette
# Match the display's native color depth (16-bit RGB565)
palette = get_palette(name="wheel", color_depth=16, length=256, saturation=1.0)
# Index directly into the palette
for i in range(16):
display_drv.fill_rect(0, i * 8, 80, 8, palette[i * 16])
If the physical display expects byte-swapped 16-bit values (common on SPI TFTs like the ST7789 or ILI9341), pass swapped=True:
palette = get_palette(name="wheel", color_depth=16, swapped=True)
🎮 Featured Browser Demos
Explore full-color gradient and animation applications built with palettes:
🎨 Palettes Gallery Showcase
Interactive color visualizer exploring Material Design tokens, HSV wheels, and RGB cubes.
🪶 Rainbow Feathers
Geometric generative art rendering smooth multi-chromatic feather curves.
🔄 Palette Rotations
Real-time palette cycling and rotational sweeps demonstrating zero-cost animations.
📜 Gradient Scrolling
Hardware vertical scrolling demonstration paired with high-precision palette shading.
📚 Documentation Map
- 🎨 Palette Gallery — Visual previews and tables for Wheel, Material Design, Cube, and Win16 palettes.
- 🔢 Color Math & Formats — RGB565 bit-packing, endianness swapping, and HSL/HSV math.
- 🧩 Integrations — Recipes for
pygraphics,pdwidgets, and hardware display drivers. - 📚 API Reference — Complete docstrings and class references.