Hardware & Programming

Gathering Supplies

This was my first dive into embedded systems. As such, there was a lot of research and purchases from TechSpark and AdaFruit to get the necessary supplies. I was lucky enough to find a Spotify Album Art guide on TechSpark which gave me a good parts list. 

Once I had all the necessary parts acquired, it was time to learn how to use the hardware. I started out with soldering an RBG Matrix HAT onto a Raspberry Pi, which would be used to control the 32x32 LED Matrix display. 

RGB Matrix HAT, used to control LED Matrix via an RPi

Learning Pi and Arduino

(Left) Overview of the board connections, (Right) Close-up of ESP32 Thing microcontroller

Once I had the proper connections set up, it was time to add software. I ran into issues connecting the LED Matrix with a Raspberry Pi using the existing software guide, but managed to find an LED guide that could be powered by Arduino using a SparkFun ESP32 Thing, so I switched to that instead. 

Testing the Matrix

I tried a few different Arduino LED Matrix examples and was able to get a few different displays. This was the result of a full-color test. I got the grid to flash multiple colors at once and the end result was very bright and colorful.