Pi4J Drivers V1.2.0: ePaper, DAC/ADC, Motors, and LoRa

A new release of the Pi4J Drivers library is available! Version 1.2.0 is a big step forward for anyone who wants to connect hardware components to a Raspberry Pi and control them with Java, without having to write the low-level I2C, SPI, or GPIO code yourself. The full announcement is on the Pi4J blog, here are the highlights.

ePaper displays

This release adds a generic SSD1680 driver, plus drivers for the Waveshare 2.7-inch ePaper display hat v2 and the large Waveshare 13.3-inch black-and-white 960x680 ePaper display. The SSD1680 and Waveshare 2.7" v2 drivers now also support partial display updates, so you no longer need to redraw (and flicker) the full screen for every small change.

Text and graphics

A new GraphicsTextAnimator makes scrolling text easy, displays can now be mirrored, and cursor management is now part of the CharacterDisplay interface.

Analog in and out

There is a new DigitalAnalogConverter interface, with reworked MCP49xx drivers and new drivers for the MCP4725, MCP4921/MCP4922, and MCP4728 DACs. On the input side, the TI ADS111x and NAU7802 ADCs are now supported, and the Mcp300xDriver is split into 10-bit (MCP3008) and 12-bit (MCP3208) subclasses.

Motors and robotics

Building something that moves? You can now use the LN298 motor driver, the ULN2003 driver, and the PiBorg UltraBorg board.

Long-range communication

Finally, a driver for the Semtech LR11xx LoRa transceiver opens the door to low-power, long-distance wireless projects in Java.

Learn more

Check the drivers release notes for all details, or compare v1.1.0 and v1.2.0 on GitHub to see every change. And as always, the Pi4J website is the place to get started with Java on the Raspberry Pi. Many thanks to all contributors who made this release possible!