Pimoroni's Raspberry Pi Pico W-Powered Cosmic Unicorn Packs Over 1,000 RGB LEDs
Chunky but funky 32×32 RGB LED matrix gets driven by MicroPython on a Raspberry Pi Pico W — and there's even early Bluetooth support.
Pimoroni has packed the pixels into the latest entry in the Pico W Aboard range, powered by a module-mounted Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller: the new Cosmic Unicorn offers over a thousand individually-addressable LEDs on a single board.
"Cosmic Unicorn is a very beautiful, all-in-one, RP2040 powered LED matrix for when you want to convey information fabulously and ginormously," the company explains of its latest device. "Invoking RP2040 magic means we can update the LEDs really quickly (we measured around 300 fps at 14-bit precision). This means there's no nasty strobing, artifacting, or brightness stepping when it's filmed, so it's perfect for adding to the background of your streaming setup."
The Cosmic Unicorn is a follow-up to the Galactic Unicorn, unveiled in June last year as one of Pimoroni's original batch of Pico W Aboard devices. Where the Galactic Unicorn uses an ultra-wide layout with 583 RGB LEDs arranged in a 53×11 matrix, though, the new Cosmic Unicorn offers a square layout of an impressive 1,024 individual-addressable LEDs in a 32×32 matrix.
On the rear of the board is a Raspberry Pi Pico W, which offers a dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller running at up to 133MHz within official specs, 264kB of static RAM (SRAM), and 2MB of off-chip quad-SPI (QSPI) flash with execute-in-place (XIP) support. Unlike the earlier Raspberry Pi Pico, the Pico W also includes a radio with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi connectivity — and Bluetooth, early support for which is included in an alpha-status firmware turning the Cosmic Unicorn into a Bluetooth speaker with integrated fast Fourier transform (FFT) visualization capabilities.
To drive the latter demo the board includes an onboard amplifier plus a small built-in speaker, with the option to add something beefier if you prefer. A battery connector provides support for truly wireless operation, while bundled metal legs allow it to operate free-standing — and two STEMMA QT/Qwiic ports on the rear offer solder-free connectivity to external hardware. "Alternatively," Pimoroni suggests, "if you want to go big or go home you could get six and build one heck of a fancy cube!"
The Cosmic Unicorn is now available on the Pimoroni store at $79.50, including pre-installed Raspberry Pi Pico W with MicroPython firmware, metal legs, and a USB micro-B cable.