Introduction

In this article I will explain how to connect a LED matrix MAX7219 circuit to a Raspberry pi.

For this you will need a Raspberry pi with Linux installed (Raspberry pi os preferred)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-MdjXsz9eM

 

Connection

Here are the pin number of the raspberry

You have to connect the led matrix to the Raspberry following the information in the table.

VCC on pin 2 du pi, GND on 6, …

Librairies et modules installation

In a terminal type the following commands:

sudo usermod -a -G spi,gpio pi
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential python3-dev python3-pip libfreetype6-dev libjpeg-dev
sudo -i pip install --upgrade pip setuptools
sudo -H pip install --upgrade luma.led_matrix

Script

 

Go to https://github.com/rm-hull/luma.led_matrix and get matrix_demo.py which is in examples.

In a terminal go to the directory of the script and execute it with

python matrix_demo.py

And there you should have the demo displayed on the matrix.

Now you can play with the code to keep what you want and customize the display.