Put on your sunglasses before wiring up this LED matrix – 64 eye-blistering RGB or RGBW LEDs adorn the NeoMatrix for a blast of configurable color and white. Arranged in an 8×8 matrix, each pixel is individually addressable. Only one microcontroller pin is required to control all the LEDs, and you get 24 or 32 bit color for each LED.
Lit up these are insanely bright (like ow my eye hurts) and can be controlled with built-in 8-bit PWM per channel. Great for adding lots of colorful dots to your project!
Wiring it up is easy: there are two 3-pin connection ports. Solder wires to the input port and provide 5VDC to the +5V and ground pins, then connect the DIN pin to your microcontroller. If you’re using our NeoPixel Arduino library, use digital #6. You’ll also need to make a common ground from the 5V power supply to the microcontroller/Arduino. Since each LED can draw as much as 60mA (thats up to 3.5 Amps per panel if all LEDs are on bright white!) we suggest our 5V 2A power supply. For most uses, you’ll see about 1-2A of current per panel.
If, say, you need MORE blinky, you can chain these together. For the second shield, connect the DIN connection to the first panel’s DOUT. Also connect a ground pin together and power with 5V. There you go! You can chain as many as you’d like although after 4 or more panels you may run low on RAM if you’re using an UNO. Watch your power usage too, you may need a 5V 10A power supply for so many of these!
There is a single data line with a very timing-specific protocol. Since the protocol is very sensitive to timing, it requires a real-time microconroller such as an AVR, Arduino, PIC, mbed, etc. It cannot be used with a Linux-based microcomputer or interpreted microcontroller such as the netduino or Basic Stamp. Our wonderfully-written Neopixel library for Arduino supports these pixels! As it requires hand-tuned assembly it is only for AVR cores but others may have ported this chip driver code so please google around. An 8MHz or faster processor is required.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
