Quick–in a pinch, let’s have ourselves a giant RGB LED Matrix! As marvelous as it sounds, it’s quite simple to fail to remember that there’s a battle to be won against choosing the right parts, debugging drivers, as well as sorting out our spaghetti wiring. rest assured, [Hzeller] has done all of the heavy-lifting for us with a Raspberry Pi RGB LED Matrix application that scales to several panels and runs on any type of Pi design to date!
Offering 24-bit color at about 100 Hz for as much as a grand overall of 36 panels, [Hzeller’s] library is no slouch. The library allows personalization of your panel arrangements, as well as a separate job (also [Hzeller’s] handiwork) makes this configuration compatible with the pixel-pusher protocol as a network device.
It’s definitely true that many of us have a thing for these displays, so you may ask: “have we seen this before? What’s all the fuss?” Like the others, the final product is a sight to behold, however [hzeller] as well as his application stands strong since of his phenomenal response to answering the question: how? In fact, almost more impressive is his comprehensive on the internet documentation. Inside, [hzeller] details different hardware configurations for a custom number of panels or a specific flavor of Pi that drives them. He likewise provides references for pinout quirks as well as provides out-of-the-box software application demos to ensure that anyone can bring this job to life. If a poorly-written or non-existent READMEs have made you timid away from building on an open-source project, fear not. From pinout quirks as well as out-of-the-box software application demos, [hzeller] has covered all the bases as well as provided us a job that people of all levels of hacking.
Perhaps the very best part of this job is the span of the audience that can take something away from it. If you’re a seasoned Linux junkie, dive into the source code to get a great feel of mechanics of exactly how [hzeller] pushes this job onto a single core in a Raspi-2 configuration. If you’re new to digital electronics, let this job be your moment to pick up a Pi, a panel (or four), as well as run, understanding that [hzeller’s] README is the only tome you’ll requirement to illuminate the night.
We had the honor of soaking up some Nyan-Cat rainbows with a online demo at this year’s SuperCon.