The Adafruit Feather ecosystem is so rich with hardware diversity, we wanted to share them, one each day. Today is the Adafruit RGB Matrix Featherwing Kit – For RP2040, M0 and M4 Feathers!
Ahoy! It’s time to create a dazzling light up project with our new RGB Matrix FeatherWing. Now you can quickly and easily create projects featuring your favorite 16 or 32-pixel tall matrix boards. Using our RGB Matrix library is easy and works wonderfully with any of our M0 or M4 based Feathers.
Please note: This wing is only tested/designed to work with the RP2040, SAMD21 M0 and SAMD51 M4 Feathers. It’s not for use with any other Feathers at this time. (That said, if you’d like to add support, we’d be happy to take a pull request on the library repo)
This wing can be assembled in one of two ways. You can either solder in a 2×8 IDC shrouded header on the top, then plug in the IDC cable that came with your matrix. This makes it easy to stack on top of your Feather. Or, you can solder in the 2×10 socket header on the bottom of the Wing, and then stack your Feather on top. That way you can plug it directly into the back of the matrix *mind blown*
This FeatherWing will work great with any of our 16×32, 32×32 or 64×32 RGB matrices, and is definitely the easiest way to glow and go.
Either way you decide to go, you can plug a 5V DC power pack into the 2.1mm DC jack. That 5V is polarity protected and then output on the other side to a 5.08mm terminal block. An onboard regulator will provide 3.3V power to your Feather so you don’t need a separate USB or battery, this makes for a very compact build!
USE
The Adafruit RGB Matrix FeatherWings Guide provides details and use examples.
Projects
Would you like to see this FeatherWing in action? Check out the projects below:
