Raspberry Pi Pico LED Shields

This is a collection of very versatile LED matrix displays due to its different resolutions and sizes, the RGB capabilities and additional buttons and joystick.

Supported Shields

Hardware

Waveshare (Pico …)

RGB LED

The Waveshare Pico RGB LED [9] is an LED matrix module designed for Raspberry Pi Pico, which has 16 × RGB × 10 (160) full-color external controlled constant current integrated LEDs, with embedded quality controller IC and LED chip. It is a pico sized clean-looking front panel.

Features and Resources	Printed Circuit Board
5V/500㎃ up to 2.5A RGB(16×10) LED(16×10) 1 On-shield 16×10 RGB LED matrix 1 GPIO pin via edge pinout RGB888, 24-bit color depth 800㎅/ₛ data rate Adjustable brightness with 256 level 16 × 10 pixels Design Data Waveshare Pico RGB LED Schematic [10]

Positions

Waveshare (Pico …)

RGB LED

There is no separate power supply on shield! The current of this product is close to 2.5A when RGB is fully lit. It is recommended to use a power supply of 5V/3A, or more. Since the USB output current of the computer is low, software should set the brightness data at RGB555, even if the full light is only about 300㎃. Also do not set the current too low, if your brightness data is less than 4 bits, part of the light will not be bright. 16×10 WS2812B cascaded RGB LED matrix

Data Sheets

• WS2812B [11]

• WS2812B Datasheet V5 [12]

• WS2812B Datasheet V2 [13]

• WS2812B Datasheet V1 [14]

• Understanding the WS2812 [15]

• WS2812B with RP2040 PIO & DMA [16]

Pinouts

Waveshare (Pico …)

RGB LED

Pin Mapping

Pinout

on-edge(1-40): 1 on-shield: 16×10 RGB LED(16×10) Default Zephyr Peripheral Mapping   1 PIO/PWM : GP0 (PWM0) 2 PIO/PWM : GP1 (PWM1) 3 GND 4 PIO/PWM : GP2 (PWM2) 5 PIO/PWM : GP3 (PWM3) 6 PIO/PWM : GP4 (PWM4) 7 PIO/PWM : GP5 (PWM5) 8 GND 9 PIO0 : GP6 (PWM6) nc def. on-shield user RGB_LED_DI 10 PIO/PWM : GP7 (PWM7) nc alt. on-shield user RGB_LED_DI 11 PIO/PWM : GP8 (PWM8) 12 PIO/PWM : GP9 (PWM9) 13 GND 14 PIO/PWM : GP10 (PWM10) 15 PIO/PWM : GP11 (PWM11) 16 PIO/PWM : GP12 (PWM12) 17 PIO/PWM : GP13 (PWM13) 18 GND 19 PIO/PWM : GP14 (PWM14) 20 PIO/PWM : GP15 (PWM15) 21 PIO/PWM : GP16 (PWM0) 22 PIO/PWM : GP17 (PWM1) 23 GND 24 PIO/PWM : GP18 (PWM2) 25 PIO/PWM : GP19 (PWM3) 26 PIO/PWM : GP20 (PWM4) 27 PIO/PWM : GP21 (PWM5) 28 GND 29 PIO/PWM : GP22 (PWM6) nc alt. on-shield user RGB_LED_DI 30 RUN (RESET) nc PIO/PWM : GP23 (PWM7) nc PIO/PWM : GP24 (PWM8) nc PIO/PWM : GP25 (PWM9) 31 ADC_CH0 : GP26 (PWM10) 32 ADC_CH1 : GP27 (PWM11) 33 GND 34 ADC_CH2 : GP28 (PWM12) nc ADC_CH3 : GP29 (PWM13) 35 ADC_VREF 36 3V3(OUT) 37 3V3_EN 38 GND 39 VSYS 40 VBUS Devicetree compatible raspberrypi,pico-header-r3 worldsemi,ws2812-rpi_pico-pio

More Samples

LED Blinky and Button

Waveshare (Pico …)

RGB LED

Hint

Neither LED Blinky nor LED Fade can be built and executed on Waveshare Pico RGB LED, because this shield has only digital RGB LEDs. A simple GPIO or PWM control is not possible!

WS2812 LED Test Pattern by PIO

See also Zephyr sample: LED strip.

Raspberry Pi PicoRaspberry Pi Pico 2Raspberry Pi Pico 2WRaspberry Pi Pico WWaveshare RP2040-LCD-0.96Waveshare RP2040-PlusWaveshare RP2350-CAN

west build -b rpi_pico -p -S "usb-console" --shield "waveshare_pico_rgb_led" -d build/waveshare_pico_rgb_led-strip_test zephyr/samples/drivers/led/led_strip
west flash -r uf2 -d build/waveshare_pico_rgb_led-strip_test

Simple logging output on target

*** Booting Zephyr OS build v4.3.0…***
[00:00:00.002,000] <inf> main: Found LED strip device rgb-led-strip
[00:00:00.002,000] <inf> main: Displaying pattern on strip

LED Display Orientation and Bit Order Test

Draw some basic rectangles onto the display. The rectangle colors and positions are chosen so that you can check the orientation of the LED display and correct RGB bit order. See also Zephyr sample: Display.

Waveshare (Pico …)

RGB LED

Using the Display driver API with chosen display. That is:

LED(16×10) : chosen { zephyr,display = &rgb_led_strip_matrix; };

16×10 RGB : &rgb_led_strip_matrix { led-strip = <&rgb_led_strip>; };

Raspberry Pi PicoRaspberry Pi Pico 2Raspberry Pi Pico 2WRaspberry Pi Pico WWaveshare RP2040-LCD-0.96Waveshare RP2040-PlusWaveshare RP2350-CAN

west build -b rpi_pico -p -S "usb-console" --shield "waveshare_pico_rgb_led" -d build/waveshare_pico_rgb_led-display_test zephyr/samples/drivers/display
west flash -r uf2 -d build/waveshare_pico_rgb_led-display_test

Simple logging output on target

*** Booting Zephyr OS build v4.3.0…***
[00:00:00.002,000] <inf> sample: Display sample for rgb-led-strip-matrix
[00:00:00.065,000] <inf> sample: Display starts

References

[1]

https://zephyrproject.org/

[2]

https://www.doxygen.org/

[3] (1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

https://www.python.org/downloads

[4]

https://pypi.org/project/Pillow

[5] (1,2)

https://pypi.org/project/Sphinx

[6]

https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/theming.html

[7] (1,2)

https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/restructuredtext/basics.html

[8]

https://sitemaps.org/protocol.html

[9]

https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/Pico-RGB-LED

[10]

https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/Pico-RGB-LED#Document

[11]

http://www.world-semi.com/ws2812-family

[12]

https://content.instructables.com/F10/WH6U/KQMCJ7I4/F10WH6UKQMCJ7I4.pdf

[13]

https://d2j2m4p6r3pg95.cloudfront.net/module_files/led-cube/assets/datasheets/WS2812B.pdf

[14]

https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/WS2812B.pdf

[15]

https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/light_ws2812-library-v2-0-part-i-understanding-the-ws2812

[16]

https://mcuoneclipse.com/2023/04/02/rp2040-with-pio-and-dma-to-address-ws2812b-leds