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128x64 RGB LED Matrix Panel - 2mm Pitch
Wintertime can be rough in the city. The sky is gray. The weather is unpredictable. So slough off those seasonal blues with some Times Square razzle dazzle from this sweet, ultra-high-density 128x64 RGB LED Matrix. These panels are typically used to make video walls. Here in New York, we see them on the sides of buses and on top of taxi cabs displaying animations or video advertisements. We thought they looked really cool, so we picked up a few boxes of them from a factory. They have 8,192 bright RGB LEDs arranged in a 128x64 grid at a 2mm pitch.
WARNING! These 64-pixel tall matrices use a non-standard 5-address multiplexing system! WARNING! Many add-ons or drivers use only a 4-address (ABCD) setup and may not support 5-address (ABCDE).
You can use these matrices with our RGB Matrix Bonnet for Raspberry Pi, RGB Matrix HAT (you'll need to connect a solder jumper), or Matrix Portal S3 (no jumper required). Some libraries and boards, such as our Arduino shield with Adafruit library, don't support 5-address multiplexing! Check that your driver board is ok with 5-address (ABCDE) displays first before purchasing.
Full Kit Contents:
- 128x64 RGB panel
- IDC ribbon cable
- power cable
RAM & Processor Requirements
Keep in mind that these displays were designed to be driven by FPGAs or other high-speed processors: they do not have built-in PWM control of any kind. Instead, you're supposed to redraw the screen over and over to 'manually' PWM the whole thing.
You'll need about 12 Kbytes of RAM to buffer the 12-bit color image. You cannot use this size panel with an Arduino UNO (ATmega328) or ATmega32u4 - you need a chip with more RAM! These displays are technically 'chainable' - connect one output to the next input - as long as you have the RAM and CPU to handle it
This display does best with a high-speed, high-RAM microcontroller like a SAMD21, SAMD51, ESP32, etc. 8-bit micros are going to struggle if they work at all. The good news is that the display is pre-white balanced with nice uniformity, so if you turn on all the LEDs, it's not a particularly tinted white.
Power Requirements
There are a lot of LEDs! You may need up to 4A per panel. We suggest our 4A regulated 5V adapter, and then connecting a 2.1mm jack. Please check out our tutorials for more details!
Connection Requirements
These displays require 13 GPIO pins to control. You may have to use consecutive or special pins depending on the driver firmware. We'll be honest: folks who try to wire directly are usually not successful, its easy to get confused and misconnect. For that reason, we strongly recommend a ready-to-go board or adapter that makes wiring as easy as plugging in the cables and powering with 5V
- We recommend the Matrix Portal ESP32-S3 for a WiFi-enabled powerful plug-and-play board
- The original Matrix Portal with SAMD51 is also a great plug-and-play board if you happen to want a Cortex M4 as a main processor (we recommend the S3 version, above, as it is faster and has more memory)
- For many Arduino-shaped boards, you may be able to use our RGB Matrix Shield (check the product page and tutorial for which Arduino-like boards can be used)
- We also have RGB Matrix FeatherWings for many Feather boards (check the product page and tutorial for which Feather boards can be used)
- For Raspberry Pi computers, our RGB Matrix Bonnet is fully plug-and-play for powerful Linux-controlled displays.
We've also got our great Protomatter library that works in Arduino and CircuitPython for quick use of many chained matrices.
Please note! These panels are remainder stock from factories that make huge light boards. For that reason, the look and size might vary from batch to batch, even though the basic operation, codebase, and tutorial are the same.