Low level control over TM1638

[Savjee]

Describe your request

I'm currently working on converting a Tuya socket thermostat to ESPHome (AliExpress listing).

I've got everything working, but I believe some changes are needed to make the LED display fully functional.

The LED display uses a GN1616 chip, a clone of the TM1638. However, some of the LEDs are masked off so they can be used to indicate certain things.

For instance:

• Segment 0, bit 0 -> Turns on the ".5" indicator
• Segment 1, bit 5 -> Turns on the sun icon
• Segment 0, bits 3 to 7 -> Actually print out the current temperature

I can use ESPHome to display the current temperature by using the printf function and using spaces to skip the other indicators:

id(thermostat_display).printf("  %d", temp);

This converts the string representation to the correct "seven_sig" representation for the TM1638.

However, to control the individual LEDs, I need low-level access to ESPHome's internal buffer. At the moment I solved this by forking the TM1638 component and adding a set_segments method:

void TM1638Component::set_segments(int position, uint8_t segments) {
  if (position >= 8) {
    return;
  }
  this->buffer_[position] = segments;
}

I'd like to know if there are better solutions. And if not, if I could open a PR for a change like this.
Any feedback is appreciated!

Why the uncertainty?

No response

Use cases

Low-level control over the TM1638 buffer.

What areas might this affect?

tm1638

Anything else?

No response