#200

$2 for 5 PCBs (any colour): jlcpcb.com/?ref=mickmake
This quick project shows you how to build an MQTT controlled RGB LED matrix panel in under 30 minutes, but I reckon it should take you a lot less.
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[@avejst]

Nice projected Thanks for sharing😀👍

[@anothergoogleuser]

Awesome video and thanks for sharing - everything!

[@MickMake]

No problem. Great to give back to the community.

[@RoyalAdTek]

Thanks fro sharing.RGB panel with high brightness and refresh rate

[@nslouma]

Great work, as always!

[@MickMake]

Thanks mate!

[@GzoGuitarWz]

This is EXACTLY what I needed to hook it up to HomeAssistant. Thanks so much!

[@killahb33]

Did you end up doing this? Just found this now and gonna give it a go

[@avejst]

Thanks for sharing 😀👍 Interesting approach👍

[@MickMake]

Thanks mate!

[@martijn4740]

Hey Mick awesome work on the display project quick question is there a way to run it as a stond alone clock with custom background without the mqtt stuff

[@RonSter]

Great project. I did everything but nothing happens. Any idea? I tested the panel with the example from hzeller. But your docker container starts without an error but nothing happens on the matrix.

[@poppabeardoes]

Nice job Mic

[@MickMake]

Thanks mate.

[@DCJona]

Hi, i just made mine but the folder rgxmatrix/images does'nt exists, could you tell me where the pictures are stored in the pi ?

[@BrianThomas]

Does anyone have any tutorials on how to enclose the final project? My 10 year old son and I have made one of these and we don't really have any solutions on making an enclosure. Thanks.

[@spacehuhn]

Great video! Does it also work with 2 of the led panels connected to each other? I was thinking fo making a big 128x64 panel with this Adafruit matrix.

[@MickMake]

Yes indeedy! But you may have some slow GIF animation when using a Pi Zero. You can change the panel size by modifying the config.json file within the container. I’ll add a feature later where you can change it via MQTT

[@coffee3in1]

I have a similar idea to make a 128x32 display as a RunDMD clock with pinball animations.

[@franciscopenaloza9507]

Hello, can it read data like of a sensor and later print in this matrix ?. Thanks

[@alucardxs77]

Hello, can images / animations be upload to the pi directly from a android phone ?

[@Ringer1982]

Hi! Great video! Could you tell how the Docker container gets the access to the GPIO pins? Are they accessible right away or I need to give special permissons to Docker or make some mapping (similar to a posts mapping) when I start a Docker container?

[@MickMake]

Yes you will need to do that. If you run the command I mentioned in my video, (and on my website), it'll do it all for you. Or else there's some handy scripts on GitHub.

[@ChopOMatic]

Great video! How does one change the setup to use a 32 x 64 panel?

[@samiulhoque3769]

I was wondering if anyone got something like this running with a esp32 and mqtt through gsm, A board like ttgo-tcall maybe?

[@miguelmunoz30]

Hello, it can be work in a panel 32 x 32? thanks for your help

[@kellykinsey3993]

how do you get rid of the flickering, tried the jumpers and still flickers

[@Learnduino]

I would like to have the euro / pound exchange rate always updated is it possible?

[@attiqaamir2557]

Awesome !!!!

[@MickMake]

Thanks mate.

[@michaelandersen1161]

Hi Mick How can I change the timezone for your docker container?

[@themaconeau]

Could be good for a ticker-style message board or Control centre for a DIY IoT solution.

[@MickMake]

I'll add that feature in later. At the moment it's just static text, (but with animated GIFs).

[@99dynasty]

Could you easily run video to the LED board?

[@eidolon0]

Awesome project, MickMake! I've been trying to order a PCB from your link in the desc, but I cannot find the "Shipping discount for up to 20$ on your first order" part anywhere on their site! Did they remove this offer?

[@MickMake]

It should be there. Shoot me an email and I’ll chase it up. [e-mail]

[@KeanElectronics]

OK, we definitely need to setup some of these in the office now. But no logging directly in as root - that's a bad bad habit!

[@KeanElectronics]

Maybe without the alien though

[@KeanM]

I agree!

[@talk9415]

great stuff! but a quick question, if I need to hook up 12 panels of 64x64, then will be enough to use the pi 3?

[@ginaxue2518]

hi sir ,i am Gina ,if you have any questions about led display you can contact me please.whatsapp/skype： 8615803088171 email address： [e-mail]

[@jamesbrady9105]

github page doesnt work & can this be done on a rasberry pi pico?

[@underscore663]

Question : does the pi itself need to be powered separately or does the 10A power supply power both the pi and the matrix?

[@fezbpu]

At 3:36 he plugs the PSU into the PI hat, so I'd assume it powers the PI

[@michaelandersen1161]

I have followed your instructions and build a panel with same hardware as you use, the build and software installations went well but when I run the docker project I only get displayed something on half of the matrix display. It looks as if the display is in 4 x 16 rows and I have something dispalyed on the first 16 rows, then I have 16 rows blank then 16 rows with display and then again 16 rows blank. I use a 64x64 P2.5 adafruit matrix panel and a raspberry pi zero and use a 5V, 10A supply. Any ideas why I get this wired display?

[@michaelandersen1161]

Ok I found out why.... I missed to solder at connection bridge on the adafruit bonnet for using a 64x64 RGB matrix learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-rgb-matrix-bonnet-for-raspberry-pi/driving-matrices#step-2982866

[@Dust599]

Is 2/3rds threw making a 32x32 using the hzeller board github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix/tree/master/adapter will be easier to just adapt what you have done now. Thanks :)

[@MickMake]

I used the hzeller library as the basis for my code. The Docker image has this library pre-built, installed and ready to roll for both C and Python. So you can shell into the container and just away you go.

[@talk9415]

do you know how many 64x64 panels a single raspberry pi can control?

[@winstonsmith478]

Where'd you get the 5V/10A switching adapter?

[@MickMake]

Not sure where exactly. I found it in my huge supply of power packs. Was glad I found it!

[@sagar4065]

Can we use these (multiple) boards as monitor for raspberry Pi without coding

[@MickMake]

Unfortunately, they don't offer full frame video. So would be fairly sluggish as a monitor.

[@BeyElder]

Nice! One question - how much panels can be daisychained together?

[@MickMake]

Good question. A Pi Zero could handle 4 panels, but it’d be very slow at updating. A Pi3+ could handle a lot more, but not sure what the theoretical limit is on these panels.

[@BeyElder]

MickMake, thank you for answering.

[@davidabbs4459]

Interesting, how hard do you think clustering this into a much larger display would be?

[@MickMake]

The problem would be bandwidth and syncing. If you’re happy with a low sync rate, then it’d work well, but wouldn’t be able to handle HD video. At last not in this setup.

[@thegreyfuzz]

Bringing this back to life....not sure if it's being followed. Is there any easy way to set the timezone ? UTC is great an all that, but UTC -5 is far more useful for me. The only reference I can find to timezone is in the MQTTpanel binary. BTW This will NOT run on Pi Zero 2 W as is, it renders a mostly solid color on the HDMI output, and summarily locks up the Pi... Runs good on Zero W (only using Bullseye, on Bookworm it just continually complaints about the sound being enabled even when it's blacklisted, then crashes), Pi 3 runs good, but the panel blinks intermittently and is annoying to see.

[@thegreyfuzz]

Got it sorted; To change the timezone: docker start project-mqttpanel # start the container docker exec -it project-mqttpanel bash # shell into the container apk add --no-cache tzdata # install timezone data cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago /etc/localtime # copy the appropriate timezone file to /etc/localtime exit # exit the shell docker restart project-mqttpanel # restart the container Additionally you can modify time/date format elements in /usr/local/etc/config.json from within the container, making a backup first is always a good idea. You probably want to save your modified container to a new image and create a new container using that image should it be updated in the future docker commit my-new-image use the docker create command included with the tutorial using new image name

[@ranukehshiga6328]

Can you use them as the main display, as if it was a monitor. It wold me awesome to play text adventure games in the shell

[@MickMake]

As far as displays go, they are very slow, but I don't see why you can't use them to play text adventure games. You don't need a fast display for that.

[@ranukehshiga6328]

MickMake exactly. But is there a simple solution like just plugging a hdmi cable, or do you need to make you own driver to use it as your main display.

[@MickMake]

There may be some drivers around that allow conversion from HDMI, but that’d be extra hardware.

[@martijn4740]

@@ranukehshiga6328 you can run video on them just fine at 30 fps +

[@stryk187]

I'm in the process of building a new gaming pc (luckily I bought the GPU back when you could still get rx 480's with 8gb of vram for $215 !!). I'm thinking about incorporating this into the side panel of the case. Maybe have a piece of acryllic cut to the size of the side panel and a square cut out of the center (or somewhere) to incorporate the LED panel... sounds like it could be cool. Maybe I could come up with (or it may already exist) some sort of android mqtt client to let friends who come over send their own messages to the panel. Could be a cool project idea... gonna have to research a bit on it, but it sounds do-able.

[@MickMake]

Nice! Mate, all you have to do is figure out how to fit it into the case. If you want to change the images within the container, you’ll have to rebuild it. I’ve put up full instructions to do that on GitHub. I’ll be updating later to make it easier to change images and upload new ones without a Docker rebuild.

[@karsnoordhuis4351]

50°c-30°c=20°c sooo 15°c+20°c=35°c under full load. Should be fine. Also, if im not mistaking, you can daisy chain those panels to get one big one, right?

[@MickMake]

Daisy chain? Absolutely, but I suspect the Pi Zero would struggle to do complex animation on two panels. It's *juuuust* struggling to keep up with one.

[@karsnoordhuis4351]

MickMake if got a use for those 8 core sbcs now.

[@MickMake]

Tempting. Even better, might look at using one of those LoFives I recently picked up. An FPGA would be able to really nudge up the refresh rate.

[@sandy25135]

Cool Project. Also did you use the Paho library in this project ?

[@MickMake]

I ended up using the Mosquitto library. It ends up being a smaller installed package than Paho within the container.

[@phanthanhhoang]

You should add credit to the rgb led matrix by Henner Zeller

[@MickMake]

Yes true! He certainly did a lot of the ground work.

[@hannahoover3688]

Great Project, got it up and running but ran into error after reboot. Error response for daemon: Driver failed programming external end point project-mqttpanel-0.10. Error starting userland proxy: listen TCP 0.0.0.0:1883: bind: address already in use. Any thoughts on how to repair. thanks

[@MickMake]

Ah yes. A common issue. You already have something listening on port 1883. You’ll need to shutdown that other something. You can check what that is by doing a “lsof -I tcp:1883” and then killing it.

[@MickMake]

Did you use a fresh Raspbian image?

[@hannahoover3688]

Ran lsof -I TCP:1883 and it was Mosquitto. Killed the Mosquitto PID and now Project-mqttpanel-0.10 runs but Mosquitoo will not start, gives same error as first described.

[@MickMake]

The Docker container runs its own Mosquitto server. If you want to run another, then you can change the port that it listens on, by changing the “-p 1883:1883” to be something else, like “-p 2883:1883”

[@MickMake]

But you’ll also need to change the Mosquitto client to point to the new port, of course.

[@theresonator01]

Can i do 128 x 128 with Rpi 4 and run movie clips?

[@martijn4740]

yes you can

[@JMNTLRDRX]

sp00ky

[@martijn4740]

Hey @MickMake can you run this script without docker ?

[@MickMake]

Yup you certainly can. I should update my docs for those who want to do that.

[@martijn4740]

@@MickMake Thanks Mick might solve mij colors beeing wrong

[@martijn4740]

@@MickMake would be helpfull thanks

[@martijn4740]

@@MickMake did that ever happen ?

[@martijn4740]

@@MickMake still waiting for it 2 years later ;(

[@event-zero]

can you do a video on video on clustering systems, and also some more Lora.

[@MickMake]

I have a series coming up on Docker, which will include Docker swarms.

[@JohnCookNet]

Hi sat mil. A shameless plug here, but i'm curious to see if my recent upload on Pi Cluster Swarm build and test notes is helpful. See also, kzbin.info/www/bejne/nqGlaGmImLGEes0

[@ufohunter3688]

I always get a kick out of your "What" ?

[@MickMake]

Ha ha. Sometimes ^H^H^H^H^H Often it’s a case of “what?!”

[@oreste6076]

Thats Cool. Can i send live Videos from a PC Too?

[@MickMake]

Hmmm. Alas it doesn’t quite have the bandwidth. If it was driven by fpga, then yes.

[@korishan]

The panels are a bit pricey for the 64x64 sizes. I was thinking of making a larger display (think animated billboard/advertisement on the side of a trailer). But one thing that's really got me wondering, is how bright are these? At 6:25 you show the skulls/warning, and it looks kinda washed out (granted, this could just be the angle and/or the cameras auto adjust). Would you be able to see these outside under sunlight? Perhaps a more detailed video on these panels could be in the works? 😉🤠

[@MickMake]

You can pick up the same panel from eBay and China a whole lot cheaper! Under studio lights you could see them, but the angle of the panels and the camera... Well it was a bit washed out. I would suspect that outside in full daylight they would be just as visible as what you saw in the video. They're not really designed as outside lights.

[@theAppleWizz]

Ok if you want to do this. I have a few tips for you. First you don't have to create your own software for this. know the panel shown in the video is used for high destiny indoor displays think p4 p5 = 4 mill form center of led to center of led. for Out door use you need depending on the size, p10 for small 4 by 8 ft they cost about 15$ for panels of 360mm by 160mm that includes cables but not the casing or the power supply. I have a few good china contacts that manufacture good Quality panels. I could help you out if you really want to do it.

[@korishan]

@MickMake Ahhh, ok. Thanks. Yeah, I looked at eBay and that was the price I was seeing for the 64x64. Unless there's another way to look them up.

[@korishan]

@theAppleWizz Thanks for the info. I'll have to get back to you on that one. I've been thinking of doing this kind of project, but it's been way back on the back burner for awhile as it's not on the front page list of things to do/work on 😉

[@jairforero]

Hi! your account in github not open

[@Jeff121456]

While I appreciate the convenience of root logins my system admin self is going nuts.

[@MickMake]

Yup agreed. I used to manage sysadmin teams of various sizes, but I’d often tell them: “Get root only if you need it. If you do, you have it because you are trusted. Don’t be an idiot. Check everything.”

[@R2053]

😂

[@lmamakos]

I am horrified whenever I see a recommendation to pipe the output of the "curl" command into a shell. You sure must be trusting people to allow any random text file on the internet to be run as commands (especially as root) on your system.

[@MickMake]

Yes, same here. On production systems, or systems “that matter” I never execute a shell script as root without reading through it first.

[@paulmacgiollacaoine8619]

Mick, is this your full time job?

[@MickMake]

Hi Paul, Alas no. It’d be great to be able to do this full time.

[@paulmacgiollacaoine8619]

Sure would, well done anyway, your work is super. Are you working in Engineering if I may ask?

[@antonnym214]

The only thing I can think OTT might mean would be Over The Top.

[@TheDutyPaid]

Year month day? Crazy!

[@MickMake]

What other options are there? :-)

[@electron-1979]

Year is most important, followed by month and then day. It's really the only way to go. What's crazy is mixing up the order

[@TheDutyPaid]

Important who for, time travelers?

[@MickMake]

We are all time travellers. :-)

[@MickMake]

Luckily I have given people the ability to change this in the JSON config file.

[@pendragnx]

Fantastic stuff.. Wish those LED panels were cheaper.. oof, $80 USD ..Although I'm sure they're a good bang for your dollar

[@MickMake]

Most of the panels are the same. So this one I bought from AdaFruit is the same as the cheap China ones. Just a little better made.

[@yomboprime]

My like was number 64! yay...

[@MickMake]

Nice round number.

[@tommygilchrist7771]

You know you're in IT when 64 is a 'round number'

[@MickMake]

Ha ha

[@yomboprime]

It's the power of two! A number with high power, nowadays.

[@yomboprime]

Also, it is the resolution of the displays in the video :-)

[@marcusschneider4109]

Nice video but I disagree with ssh root access config.

[@MickMake]

Yup. For things that count I disable, but for things that don’t matter I often enable. I should go into this on my next LinuxFu series video.

[@marcusschneider4109]

Seems legit :)

[@rishav4343]

Waifai

[@maximilianjungblut376]

Hay

[@MickMake]

Horses eat it.

[@maximilianjungblut376]

:D

[@ingmarm8858]

Your videos come with bible lessons?

[@MickMake]

They do indeed, but only at the end.

[@blackswan7292]

why feye. WiFi, Like HiFi..

[@MickMake]

:-D Sometimes it's fun to confuse people. :-D