@Pixelmatix, great work! I’ve looked for APA102 matrix panels and they are quite expensive - any thoughts? Do you still plan on having a driver for the “dumb” RGB Matrix panels (eg. Adafruit 32x32)?
Wants - small prototyping area. This has been popular on the simple shield I created.
Solutions - a barrel jack on the board consumes a lot of space. I like the idea of powering the panel and having a pigtail/connector to the board. That keeps the connector footprint on the board very small (and cheaper).
Powering via USB is always tricky since LEDs can suck a lot of power if you’re not careful. Since the (above) power connector essentially connects to the Vin pin of the Photon, it could easily also act as a power output connector (when Photon is USB powered) for small LED strings. A jumper could be used to bypass a protection diode if one is used for power input.
I’ve noticed the display power-up issue as well, even on “dumb” panels. I’m not sure this is an consequence of simply applying power to the panel or as a consequence of the Photon power-up sequence. If the latter is the case, a tri-state level shifter could be disabled via a suitable pull-up or pull-down resistor and activated in code with an extra GPIO pin on the Photon.
Likes - The code which runs on a Photon will run on an Electron. I’ve recompiled the RGBPongClock (using the RGBMatrixPanel library) and it ran unmodified on the Electron. It even worked on my RGB Matrix shield (plugged into headers) with the extra pins remaining unconnected.
I haven’t tested on the Redbear Duo yet but that’s coming up this weekend.
I appreciate your great work and look forward to your continued development of this fantastic library! 