Enter the (LED) matrix with this all-in-one, USB-C powered controller for HUB75 panels.
Interstate 75 is a RP2040-based driver board for HUB75-style LED matrices. It's designed to plug neatly into the back of a LED panel, and provides a quick and easy way to whip up some scrolling signage or an eye-catching LED display for sensor outputs.
I75 is powered and programmable by USB-C. USB-C is capable of providing up to 3A of power which should be enough to power a single 64x64 (or smaller) panel, assuming you're not planning anything too eye-bleedingly bright. If you need more power than that (so you can chain multiple panels together, perhaps?) you can inject it into the screw terminals instead. There's also two useful buttons, a reset button and an onboard RGB LED.
We've also popped a QW/ST connector on there, to make it super easy to plug in Qwiic or STEMMA QT breakouts.
About RP2040
Raspberry Pi's RP2040 microcontroller is a dual core ARM Cortex M0+ running at up to 133Mhz. It bundles in 264kB of SRAM, 30 multifunction GPIO pins (including a four channel 12-bit ADC), a heap of standard peripherals (I2C, SPI, UART, PWM, clocks, etc), and USB support.
One very exciting feature of RP2040 is the programmable IOs which allow you to execute custom programs that can manipulate GPIO pins and transfer data between peripherals - they can offload tasks that require high data transfer rates or precise timing that traditionally would have required a lot of heavy lifting from the CPU.
NOTES
- LED matrix panels and cables are sold separately, check out the extras tab for some options!
