Datasheet

The script will confirm your selections and offer one more chance to cancel without changes.

There’s a lot of software to update, download and install, so it may take up to 15 minutes or so to complete. Afterward,

you’ll be asked whether you want to reboot the system. If you’ve selected to install RTC support (for the Matrix HAT +

RTC) or have made a change in the “quality” vs “convenience” setting, a reboot is required.

All other settings (LED matrix size, number of “chained” matrices and so forth) are specified at run-time.

Testing the Examples

The installer creates a directory called rpi-rgb-led-matrix , and inside this is a subdirectory examples-api-use with a few

programs we can use to experiment with the matrix and confirm everything’s working.

All of the examples — and any code using the companion libraries — accept a common set of command-line switches

for specifying the LED matrix size and other options. Among the more vital options are:

--led-rows= (rows)

Specifies the number of rows (or height or the number of pixels vertically) of your LED matrix (or matrices, if you have

several chained…they all need to be the same size though). Default value if unspecified is 32. Maximum value with the

Adafruit RGB Matrix HAT + RTC is 32. Maximum with the RGB Matrix Bonnet is 64.

--led-cols= (columns)

Specifies the number of columns (or width or the number of pixels horizontally) of your LED matrix/matrices. Default

value if unspecified is 32.

--led-chain= (chained)

Specifies the number of matrices in the chain…the output of one connects to the input of the next. Default value if

unspecified is 1.

Overclocked Raspberry Pi boards may produce visual glitches on the LED matrix. If you encounter such

trouble, first thing to try is to set the Pi to the default (non-overclocked) speed using raspi-config, then reboot

and retest.