“Great for learning how to develop for the Pico with loads of example code to get you going. Word of caution, the Pimoroni default constructor for the APA102 object runs the clock at 20Mhz! The resulting waveform is pretty ugly and unreliable, with many glitching LEDs. Luckily, you can override this default in the constructor. Setting to 2Mhz gives a perfect clock signal and will run hundreds of LEDs flawlessly. Add the 2000000 as an additional parameter when calling the object constructor:
APA102 led_strip(N_LEDS, pio0, 0, plasma2040::DAT, plasma2040::CLK, 2000000);
You can see the difference in the scope traces”
“A compact, self-contained board that really simplifies the hardware side of driving WS2812 strips. The documentation could be a bit less cryptic but the schematic helps. With the USB C input supplying 3A it should be all we need for lighting a small model railway diorama. A couple more pin connections for external input buttons would have helped us but overall I am really impressed by the design.”
Ahoy David!
Thanks for the review! Did you find our Learn guide at https://learn.pimoroni.com/article/plasma-2040 ?
If you have any suggestions for documentation improvements you'd like to see we'd love to hear them - you can drop us an email at support@pimoroni.com.
“Onto my second one of these now. I use them with the very cheap WS2812b LED matrix (32x8 and 16x16). In the most recent cases, I am creating fight timers for our AntWeight battle bot arenas. They are mounted in a 3d printed case and will be extended with buttons, speakers or buzzers in the near future. I use them both with the MicroPython libraries and CircuitPython. Annoyingly fonts are an issue with this size, but it was easy enough to knock up a simple version of my own.”
“I wish I had seen this board before spending a small fortune of Xmas lights, had a string of 100 single addressable dot leds and managed to create the effects and routines that make them look amazing.
The board is very well constructed, easy to use and write over for. My only complaint is no Bluetooth or WiFi so you can change effects via a web browser or mobile app.”
