Brian Lough's ESP32 Trinity Aims to Simplify Wiring Up Large-Format RGB LED Matrix Panels
Designed to slot right onto the headers of a HUB75/HUB75E RGB LED matrix panel, this board gets you up and running quickly.
Maker Brian Lough has launched an open-hardware board for driving HUB75/HUB75E RGB LED matrix panels, dubbed the ESP32 Trinity, designed to make assembly as easy as possible.
"'Trinity' has a lot of significance for Irish people," Lough explains of the board's name. "The Trinity Knots symbol; the shamrock, [...] a way to represent the Christian Holy Trinity; the most prestigious college in Ireland is Trinity College. While the above is all true, none of them is why it is called the Trinity. It is called the Trinity after the main female character from the Matrix movies. I felt that 'Neo' was too close to 'NeoPixels.'"
Designed for use with low-cost large-format HUB75/HUB75E RGB LED matrix panels, the key selling point to the Trinity is that it makes wiring as simple as possible — just popping onto the input header of the panel and offering screw terminals for the power cable.
"Soldering the I2S matrix shield was a barrier to entry for people that I wanted to remove by making a fully assembled board," Lough explains. "I was also able to add additional features such as much better support for powering the project via USB."
"This really makes using the display as simple as possible and can be used to make some pretty awesome looking projects! As it is fully assembled, you just plug it into your matrix, attach the power cables and you are ready to start making!"
The board includes all available pins broken out for additional hardware, plus an add-on area compatible with the GY521 (MPU6050) accelerometer — "but," Lough notes, "you can use these pins for other devices either."
The boards are supplied fully assembled for standard use, but with bonus loose components: A light-dependent resistor, a female header for the breakout area, and a stacking header for it the Trinity doesn't clear the target matrix board without it.
The ESP32 Trinity is available to order on Lough's Tindie store at $40, with design files and source code available on GitHub under the CERN Open Hardware License v1.2.