You will chirp with delight when you see how easy it is to make your very own 8×16 LED matrix display for any Feather. At 0.8″ square, the little 8×8 matrices have everything a big LED matrix has, but bite sized!
A Feather board without ambition is a Feather board without FeatherWings! This is the Adafruit 8×16 LED Matrix FeatherWing! This FeatherWing backpack makes it easy to combine and control two of our adorable mini 8×8 LED matrices with a FeatherWing driver board. Double them up for 128 total bright LEDs.
Works with any and all Feathers!
Normally, wiring up 8×16 matrices would require a breath-taking 24 GPIO pins, which is way too many pins. That’s where this lovely 16×8 LED matrix backpack PCB comes in. It contains a HT16K33 I2C LED matrix driver that does all the multiplexing work for you, and is controlled over the two I2C pins. It’s easy to use, has a portable library that runs on any of our Feathers to turn on/off each LED.
The 16×8 backpack is also great for making scrolling displays or small video displays. In our example, we set it up to display small bitmap emoticons but you can also display text that moves – kind of like a sign in front of a miniature car dealership.
This product kit comes with:
A fully tested and assembled Adafruit 8×16 LED Matrix FeatherWing
Two sixteen pin headers
A bit of soldering is required to attach the matrix onto the FeatherWing but its very easy to do and only takes about 5 minutes!
This version does not come with the 8×8 mini LED matrix displays, but we have lots available in the shop. We also have combo-packs available in White, Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, and Yellow-Green.
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.
