After building a few LED matrices from LED strip lighting and soldering a ton of connections, I decided to give these pre-fabricated LED matrix modules a shot. After a bit of research it turns out that using only a Raspberry Pi and a fully functional Library from the Legend Henner Zeller, you can accomplish just about anything. The cheap Chinese panels that we sourced are fitted with a HUB75 connector?which is easily interfaced with a breadboard and some jumper wires or using the opensource Active-3 board, again designed by Henner. His library can be found here: Rpi-RGB-LED-Matrix?Library – https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix

  • LED Matrix: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/1239156 (P5 32×32 modules with Hub75 are a good starting point.)
  • A Raspberry Pi 2 or 3
  • A breadboard and T-Cobbler RPI 40 pin Breakout (Just to make life easier! You can grab these from Adafruit.)
  • Alternatively, build an Active-3 adapter for easier chaining of Matrix Panels. (See hzeller GitHub page for more details.)
  • Some Jumper Wires
  • A sense of adventure…..

Code

Assuming you are semi-proficient with Linux and have installed Raspbian than you can follow along here. Otherwise, you first need to set up your RPI and access the terminal/SSH interface. The guide here will get you up and with the “NOOBS” installation for your pi.

Install Henner Zeller’s LED Matrix library onto your Pi:

sudo wget https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix/archive/master.zip

Unzip the Archive:

sudo unzip master.zip

Once unzip completes you should then be able to view the directory and it’s contents:

cd rpi-rgb-led-matrix-master/

You then need to compile the library by running the command:

sudo make

Once compiled, you can run the following command, this will give you an output of all the available switches:

sudo ./led-matrix

This command will output the following for your reference:

$ sudo ./led-matrix
Expected required option -D <demo>
usage: ./led-matrix <options> -D <demo-nr> [optional parameter]
Options:
        -r <rows>     : Panel rows. '16' for 16x32 (1:8 multiplexing),
                        '32' for 32x32 (1:16), '8' for 1:4 multiplexing; Default: 32
        -P <parallel> : For Plus-models or RPi2: parallel chains. 1..3. Default: 1
        -c <chained>  : Daisy-chained boards. Default: 1.
        -L            : 'Large' display, composed out of 4 times 32x32
        -p <pwm-bits> : Bits used for PWM. Something between 1..11
        -l            : Don't do luminance correction (CIE1931)
        -D <demo-nr>  : Always needs to be set
        -d            : run as daemon. Use this when starting in
                        /etc/init.d, but also when running without
                        terminal (e.g. cron).
        -t <seconds>  : Run for these number of seconds, then exit.
                        (if neither -d nor -t are supplied, waits for <RETURN>)
        -b <brightnes>: Sets brightness percent. Default: 100.
        -R <rotation> : Sets the rotation of matrix. Allowed: 0, 90, 180, 270. Default: 0.
Demos, choosen with -D
        0  - some rotating square
        1  - forward scrolling an image (-m <scroll-ms>)
        2  - backward scrolling an image (-m <scroll-ms>)
        3  - test image: a square
        4  - Pulsing color
        5  - Grayscale Block
        6  - Abelian sandpile model (-m <time-step-ms>)
        7  - Conway's game of life (-m <time-step-ms>)
        8  - Langton's ant (-m <time-step-ms>)
        9  - Volume bars (-m <time-step-ms>)
        10 - Evolution of color (-m <time-step-ms>)
        11 - Brightness pulse generator
Example:
        ./led-matrix -t 10 -D 1 runtext.ppm
Scrolls the runtext for 10 seconds

Now its time to get some output onto the panel. If you are running a singular 32×32 panel, you should be able to run the example without issue.

sudo ./led-matrix -t 10 -D 1 runtext.ppm

If your panel is connected correctly and powered up you should see a scrolling image pass through the panel. With the example above it will only last 10 seconds. You can now begin to experiment with the above switches to see what output you can achieve.

  • Output RPI GUI to Matrix Panels (Coming Soon!)
  • Output Twitter msg to Matrix Panels? (Coming Soon!)
  • Use Pixelpusher Protocol on Matrix? (Coming Soon!)