Skip to content

What's better than a single LED? Lots of LEDs! A fun way to make a small colorful display is to use a 1.2" Bi-color 8x8 LED Matrix. Matrices like these are 'multiplexed' - so to control all the 128 LEDs you need 24 pins. That's a lot of pins, and there are driver chips like the MAX7219 that can help control a matrix for you but there's a lot of wiring to set up and they take up a ton of space. Here at Adafruit we feel your pain! After all, wouldn't it be awesome if you could control a matrix without tons of wiring? That's where these adorable LED matrix backpacks come in. They work perfectly with the matrices we stock. It's called a Bicolor LED, but you can have 3 colors total by turning on the red and green LEDs, which creates yellow. That's 3 colors for the price of 2!

The matrices use a driver chip that does all the heavy lifting for you: They have a built in clock so they multiplex the display. They use constant-current drivers for ultra-bright, consistent color, 1/16 step display dimming, all via a simple I2C interface. The backpacks come with address-selection jumpers so you can connect up to four mini 8x8's or eight 7-segments/bicolor (or a combination, such as four mini 8x8's and two 7-segments and two bicolor, etc) on a single I2C bus.

The product kit comes with:

  • A fully tested and assembled LED backpack
  • 1.2" Bi-color 8x8 LED Matrix
  • 4-pin header

A bit of soldering is required to attach the matrix onto the backpack but its very easy to do and only takes about 5 minutes.

Of course, in classic Adafruit fashion, they have a detailed tutorial showing you how to solder, wire and control the display. Adafruit even wrote a very nice library for the backpacks so you can get running in under half an hour, displaying images on the matrix or numbers on the 7-segment. If you've been eyeing matrix displays but hesitated because of the complexity, his is the solution you've been looking for!

Technical Details

Bi-Color LED Display Datasheet

Datasheets, schematic, EagleCAD PCB files, and Fritzing available in the product tutorial

  • This board/chip uses I2C 7-bit address between 0x70-0x77, selectable with jumpers

Backpack Dimensions:

  • 33mm x 41mm x 4mm / 1.3" x 1.6" x 0.16"
  • Mounting Holes: 28mm x 36mm / 1.1" x 1.4"

 

Compare products

{"one"=>"Select 2 or 3 items to compare", "other"=>"{{ count }} of 3 items selected"}

Select first item to compare

Select second item to compare

Select third item to compare

Compare