🎉  Happy 13th Birthday Raspberry Pi!   🎂   1,000+ deals in store!   🥳
🎉  Happy 13th Birthday Raspberry Pi!   🎂   1,000+ deals in store!   🥳

Scroll Bot - Pi Zero WH Project Kit

by Pimoroni

A robot friend to sit on your desk and scroll the news, weather, or your Twitter feed - Scroll Bot!

Updated version! Our Scroll Bot kit now includes a Raspberry Pi Zero WH and a brand spanking new Scroll HAT Mini - this means there's now absolutely no soldering required.

The Scroll Bot Kit* combines the Pi Zero WH with our Scroll HAT Mini board, and masquerades as a friendly orange robot, perfect for sitting on your desk or on a shelf. It's ideal for scrolling messages or for simple animations and, of course, it takes advantage of the built-in wireless LAN on the Pi Zero WH. It'll take around 30 minutes to assemble everything** (check out our assembly guide for details).

Kit contents*

  • Pi Zero WH with pre-soldered headers
  • Scroll HAT Mini with 17x7 individually dimmable white LEDs
  • Orange robot stand and diffuser
  • 50cm USB A to micro-B cable
  • USB A (female) to micro B (male) adaptor
  • Mini to full-size HDMI adaptor
  • Sticker sheet (personalise your Scroll Bot!)
  • Comes in a reusable kit box

*Just add your own micro-SD card!

Scroll Bot uses our Scroll HAT Mini board, a dense matrix of 17x7 (119 total) bright white LEDs. Each pixel's brightness can be controlled individually, meaning that it's possible to create stunning animations or even anti-aliased text. The LED matrix sits behind Scroll Bot's mouth, and the frosted orange acrylic diffuses the LEDs beautifully.

Use the built-in wireless LAN to make your Scroll Bot internet-connected and have him/her/them inform you of the latest news, weather, track hashtags or mentions on Twitter, or much, much more.

Features

  • 17x7 matrix of bright white pixels (119 total)
  • Individual PWM brightness control of each pixel
  • Uses the IS31FL3731 LED matrix driver chip
  • 3-layer orange robot stand and diffuser
  • Pi Zero WH with single core CPU and built-in wireless LAN and Bluetooth
  • Adaptor kit
  • 50cm USB A to micro-B cable (power your Pi from an existing charger or computer)
  • Python library

Software

Our handy one-line installer will install the Scroll pHAT HD Python library for you, which will also work with Scroll HAT Mini. We've included a bunch of examples too, to show off what you can do!

Note: that the default orientation for Scroll HAT Mini is upside-down if you're using it in a Scroll Bot. To flip it, simply add scrollphathd.rotate(180) towards the top of your code, just below the import lines.

Notes

Assembled size of Scroll Bot is 125x85x67mm (WxHxD).

"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."

19 customer reviews

2 years ago
A very good screen. I did have to make some tweaks to the Arduino library to make the graphics line up properly, and the colours also require adjustment. However, it was a quick job so I can't complain too much.
by Ben about 0.96" SPI Colour LCD (160x80) Breakout via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Great little device - bright display with wide viewing angle. Software setup is reasonably straightforward. I have had a few issues with colours randomly not being the colour specified - there doesn't seem to be any way of fixing this other than turning it off and on a few times until it starts working again......
by Richard about 0.96" SPI Colour LCD (160x80) Breakout via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Works nicely, decent viewing angle. Backlight is bright enough for day; a bit too bright for dark viewing but that’s a niche case anyway. With it sat in the mini Breakout Garden on top of the Pi Zero it feels like everything needed to drive it it much bigger than the Pi or screen itself; proportionally the overhead of the breakout connectors and the garden etc are quite big. Once you incorporate it into an actual permanent build that’s much slicker. Too wide to fit the width of a Pi Zero unless you’ve got it raised high enough up that it clears all the GPIO pins, but on something more custom you could fit it quite neatly on there if you weren’t needing standard headers.
by Anonymous about 0.96" SPI Colour LCD (160x80) Breakout via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Works nicely, decent viewing angle. Backlight is bright enough for day; a bit too bright for dark viewing but that’s a niche case anyway. With it sat in the mini Breakout Garden on top of the Pi Zero it feels like everything needed to drive it it much bigger than the Pi or screen itself; proportionally the overhead of the breakout connectors and the garden etc are quite big. Once you incorporate it into an actual permanent build that’s much slicker. Too wide to fit the width of a Pi Zero unless you’ve got it raised high enough up that it clears all the GPIO pins, but on something more custom you could fit it quite neatly on there if you weren’t needing standard headers.
by Anonymous about 0.96" SPI Colour LCD (160x80) Breakout via REVIEWS.io
5 years ago
Be aware, this has a very fine ribbon cable on the back that stands proud of the PCB and so care is needed when plugging in or removing from the garden. Driver on the Pi is a long install - support is simpler on the Arduino boards! Quality is good (esp given the size) and it is nice and bright.
by Andrew about 0.96" SPI Colour LCD (160x80) Breakout via REVIEWS.io
6 years ago
Have a stack of headless pi-zero W's that I was planning to mount to the backside of my main monitor, and now I can have status displays for them all that sit on the monitor edge. Soldered this up in about two minutes and was off on a mission to deploy rainbows. Install script does not enable SPI in config.txt, needed to do that on my own, no big deal. 5V pin for me caused distorted colors (no colors matched). It also seemed to cause a problem with the BL pin. Connected to 3.3V pin and all my troubles with the colors went away. Install script did not download the latest from github, and as such deployrainbows.gif was missing. I had to download that manually, again, not a problem. gif.py did not display the gif for me with rotation=90, which is default for the library. I had to adjust the code to swap width/height to get it to display correctly when rotated to 90/270. The overall initial experience was a little lacking, but I feel awesome since I got everything working. Pros: Wiring Directions are compete. Looks amazing - Colors are bright. Viewing angle is insane (in the membrane). Smooth animation on deployrainbows.gif and other samples. Definitely worth the money. Cons: None that I can see.
by David about 0.96" SPI Colour LCD (160x80) Breakout via REVIEWS.io

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