Interstate 75 W (RP2350) – RGB LED Matrix Driver

An all-in-one, RP2350-powered controller for HUB75 LED matrix panels.

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 128×64 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 32×32, 32×64, 64×64 and 128×64 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

Pinout and Schematic

• Download a printable PDF version
• Schematic (RP2350 version)
• Schematic (Pico W Aboard version)

Getting Started

You can find the most recent version of the MicroPython firmware and examples at the link below:

• Interstate 75 MicroPython firmware and examples

Connecting Breakouts

I75 W has a Qw/ST (AKA Qwiic/STEMMA QT) connector, so you can connect up Qw/ST breakouts easily using a JST-SH to JST-SH cable.

• Breakouts currently compatible with our C++/MicroPython build

We’ve also broken out a bunch of useful pins along the bottom edge of the board (including I2C, analog, UART and debug pins) so you can solder things like breakouts or analog potentiometers directly to them.

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.