The Pixel Badge’s app store app is hooked up to badge.team’s Hatchery. The Hatchery is a completely free platform that hosts apps for all badges running badge.team firmware (of which we’re fervent contributors).

On the Hatchery, apps are called eggs, following terminology from Python.

Check it out in your browser, and make an account to make your apps available to everyone else!

Creating a new app

Log in to your account, and then go to the Eggs. Now, click on the add button in the top right.

Here, choose a category for app and select the Pixel in the compatibility list. Give your app a cool name, and tell people what it does in the description field.

When you’ve created your new app, you’ll be taken to the app’s edit screen. Here, edit the file __init__.py and paste in the code of your app. This file will be executed anytime someone starts your app.

Making a pretty icon

Most cool apps have an icon, either static or animated. This is shown in the launcher screen of the badge when your app is selected.

You can make an icon by clicking on the Add icon button in your app’s edit page. Here, you can either point-and-click an icon in the live editor, or copy an image of your own. The format of the icon follows the data that the rgb module needs.

Want to use an animated gif image? Check out our Python script for generating the icon data from a .gif file.