Little Bird
Unicorn HAT
What's going to protect your beloved Raspberry Pi from an onslaught of rainbow-coloured fusion? That's right, it's Unicorn HAT. Sporting a matrix of 64 ...
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What's going to protect your beloved Raspberry Pi from an onslaught of rainbow-coloured fusion? That's right, it's Unicorn HAT.
Sporting a matrix of 64 (8 x 8) RGB LEDs and powered directly from the Pi, this is the most compact pocket aurora available.
Unicorn HAT provides a wash of controllable colour that is ideal for mood-lighting, 8x8 pixel art, persistence of vision effects, status indications, or just blasting colour into your surroundings.
The MagPi said that Unicorn HAT was "one of the coolest HATs around"
Features
- 64 RGB LEDs (WS2812B)
- LED data driven via DMA over PWM
- Unicorn HAT pinout
- Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3B+, 3, 2, B+, A+, Zero, and Zero W
- Python library
- Comes fully assembled
Software
We've put together a Unicorn HAT Python library to make it a breeze to use, including lots of beautiful examples of what it can do.
Our software does not support Raspbian Wheezy.
Notes
- Warning: WS2812 LEDs are bright enough to cause eye pain, do not look at them directly when brightly lit. We recommend the use of a diffuser.
- Photo-sensitivity warning: flashing, strobing, and patterns of lights may cause epileptic seizures. Always take care and immediately stop using if you feel unwell (dizziness, nausea, affected vision, eye twitching, disorientation).
- Power: Unicorn HAT requires a >2A microUSB power supply for your Pi. We recommend the official Raspberry Pi power supply.
- Compatibility (audio): as Unicorn HAT uses PWM and GPIO18, it will interfere with analogue audio playback (random colour patterns and flickering). HDMI should work just fine! :D
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- HDMI
- HDMI is a common digital video and audio connection used by computers, media players, and many displays. If a display kit has HDMI input, it is usually much easier to test with a single-board computer because it can act like a normal monitor.
- LED
- A light-emitting diode (LED) is a small electronic component that emits light when current flows through it in the correct direction. Because it only conducts one way, its polarity matters, and a through-hole LED must be soldered the correct way around to light up.
- PWM
- Pulse Width Modulation is a way for a digital pin to simulate variable output power by switching on and off very quickly. It matters for controlling things like LED brightness, motor speed, or servo-style signals from a microcontroller pin.
- RGB
- Short for red, green and blue, the three primary colours of light that are mixed in varying amounts to make a wide range of colours. In electronics RGB can refer to an LED or pixel that blends these three colours, or to a colour signal or interface that carries separate red, green and blue channels.
- WS2812B
- A smart RGB LED chip with a tiny built-in controller, commonly used in addressable light strips and panels. It matters because many WS2812B LEDs can be chained together and controlled from one microcontroller pin, but they need compatible code and careful power planning as the number of LEDs grows.
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