“Nice bright LED panel. Takes a bit of fiddling to get it running smoothly with no flickering. You should shop around a bit as well as I have since found this a bit cheaper elsewhere.”
“Ahoy Pimoroni and customers!
I have purchased a total of six of these panels over the last few months and I use them with the Adafruit RGB Bonnet which seems to work very well. The demonstration programmes available on the website are easy to install on my Pi 3 and make a good starting point for your own developments.
So far I have wired up four of the panels, using the ribbon cables supplied. My power leads have been modified to chain the 5V from the bonnet to the first pair, then on to the second pair. I use a "patent" connector for pairs of panels, with a 30mm tapped plastic standoff and axial screws to lock the spade terminals together, then another pair of wires link to an identical arrangement on the second pair.
Power supply. My initial experiment was with a 4-cell 7AH NiMh pack however this was not good enough. I tried a heavy-duty adjustable supply, this worked fine but only as a trial. My recent purchase of a 25W, 5V 5A "brick" is the solution. This has a flying lead with a 2.1 mm connector which fits the socket on the bonnet. I suggest that heavy-duty power leads are used, radiating from the power supply instead of daisy-chaining. Max current with four panels is 1.8 A.
If the array is bent into a "U", the data ribbon is a bit short at 150 mm, I advise one data ribbon which is just a bit longer, e.g. 200 mm.
A very easy to use LED panel, daylight readable, which can be scaled up as required.”
