RGB Matrix Adapter Board Converter for Raspberry Pi Motherboards and for Raspberry Pi Pico 1 HUB75 Interface 2 Power Input Connectors Type-C 5V/4A and DC-044 5V/8A

I was a little worried buying this product without any reviews, but it works out of the box with a raspberry pi 3b+ and a waveshare 64x32 RGB LED matrix display. I got it working with a raspberry pi pico w as well, and the power cable to this adapter board powers the pico too, so only one power cable needed!I was confused at first (due to an unrelated error, my first waveshare display was broken), and the seller was responsive. They sent over technical documentation for the board as well.With the raspberry pi 3b+ this works on the default configurations of the hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix project on GitHub. For the pico I had to manually enter the GPIO mappings, but then Adafruit's circuitpython led matrix tutorial worked for me as well.I like this board because it is simpler than Adafruit's matrix hat, no battery to worry about. Overall definitely recommend giving it a try.

I currently have a Raspberry Pi Pico running from a breadboard and using it to drive a hub75 panel. I purchased this board for a more permanent setup. After opening it up and checking the wiring data sheet for this device, I realized that it was poorly designed for use with a Pico. The advantage of using a pico for driving a hub75 is that it has the PIO state machines that can be configured to send the data at the necessary speed. However, the GPIO pins that are going to be driven by the PIO controller need to be in consecutive order. However, on this device, the RGB outputs are not in consultive order. For example, R(lower) uses GP05 and G(lower) used GP08. The addressing lines are also not consecutive. Additionally, the clock line is located in the between the addressing lines.I guess it's possible to "bit-bang" the hub75 protocol, but this is much less than ideal.So overall, this makes it very impractical to use with the Pico.

When you power on a quality rgb matrix hat, the display should remain blank so as not to blind you with random junk, and also to reduce power draw. This hat DOES NOT do that. Every time you turn on the power, the display panel blinds you with full brightness garbage. Sometimes it even flickers which may cause epileptic seizures. In addition, this hat draws a ton of power for some reason, far far more than a quality adafruit hat. Between the hat and the display blinding full brightness garbage, it pulls so much power that the pi won’t even boot. And finally, for some reason, it does not pass power to the pi thru the header. You have to power the pi separately. All of the above makes this hat completely useless. Save your time and money and go buy a different one,

I bought this along with a 32x64 matrix and tried to set it up on a RPI 3b+. I haven't had any luck getting the matrix to light even once. I give 3 stars because I don't know if this is the cause, the matrix or my coding etc.I do notice that it doesn't power the RPI thru the GPIO pins, like I thought it should.

Does not power the Pi, and the unit draws more power then the Adafruit. It also would not communicate with script written for rgb matrix for me using proven good script.