Interstate 75 W - RGB LED Matrix Driver Starter Kit

Interstate 75 W is a RP2350-based driver board for HUB75-style LED matrices - they're the chainable LED panels that you sometimes see making up video walls or big advertising displays. It's designed to plug neatly into the back of a LED panel, and it provides a quick and easy way to whip up some scrolling signage or an eye-catching LED display for sensor outputs. I75 W has wireless connectivity so you can also use it to display information from the internet! 

It's powered via USB-C, which should also be able to power a few connected panels happily, assuming you're not planning anything too eye-bleedingly bright. It has three handy user buttons (A, B and BOOT) 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.

Here are some things you could do!

• Tap into an API and display bus times, plane tracking or traffic info.
• Generate a big bold graph showing air quality or other sensor readings.
• Create some ad hoc, easily adjustable signage for your classroom, maker stall or kebab shop.
• Scroll greetz to your crew, just like in the old days:

What's in the Starter Kit?

You can buy an I75 W on its own, or as part of a Starter Kit that includes LED panels to make a big square 128 x 128 (32 x 32cm) or rectangular 256 x 64 (64 x 16cm) display. The Starter Kit includes:

• Interstate 75 W (RP2350)
• 2x 128x64 RGB LED matrix panels 
• Power and data cables to connect up the panels
• 8x magnetic feet with screw threads
• A nice long USB cable

Features

• Powered by RP2350A (Dual Arm Cortex M33 running at up to 150MHz with 520KB of SRAM)
• 4MB of QSPI flash supporting XiP
• Raspberry Pi RM2 module (CYW43439), supporting IEEE 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN, and Bluetooth
• Compatible with our 32x32, 32x64, 64x64 and 128x64 LED matrices.
• Sturdy screw terminals for powering the LED panels
• USB-C connector for programming and power
• Two user buttons (labelled A and B)
• Reset and boot buttons (the boot button can also be used as a user button)
• RGB LED
• Qw/ST (Qwiic/STEMMA QT) connector
• Comes fully-assembled (no soldering required)
• Programmable with C/C++ or MicroPython

Notes

• Measurements: approx 64.3 x 36 x 17mm (L x W x H, including connectors)

About RP2350

The RP2350 chip is the Double Quarter Pounder & Fries to the RP2040's Double Cheeseburger and can have one or more RISC-V burgers instead of either of the M33 ARMs, to stretch the metaphor.

In addition to the modern M33 ARM cores, there are sides of: more PIO capability, a variety of low power states for sipping electrons, a whole security system and some sprinklings of specialist digital video circuits to offload DVI/HDMI output.

You can expect a tasty boost in performance - our "real world" MicroPython tests are running up to 2x faster compared to RP2040, and floating point number crunching in C/C++ is up to 20x faster. The extra on-chip RAM will make a big difference when performing memory intensive operations (such as working with higher resolution displays) and even more can be added thanks to external PSRAM support.

RP2350 comes in two flavours - A (standard) and B (all the pins). The B chip has a stonking 48 usable GPIO pins, including 8 ADCs and 24 PWMs, and features on some of our new products.