5x5 RGB Matrix Breakout

by Pimoroni

This super-cute 5x5 RGB LED matrix breakout is a neat way to visualise sensor data or for simple animations or notifications, and it's Raspberry Pi and Arduino-compatible.

These little matrices are ideal for visualising data from other Pimoroni breakouts in a Breakout Garden HAT, like graphing environmental data from our BMP280 or BME680 breakouts. Or why not use two together as headlights or brake lights for your Pi-powered vehicle?

Like our other breakouts, this one just pops straight onto your Pi's pins once you've soldered on the included right-angle female header, and we included a trace that can be cut to change the I2C address from 0x74 to 0x77, if you want to use two matrices at once!

It's compatible with our fancy Breakout Garden HAT, where using breakouts is as easy just popping it into one of the six slots and starting to grow your project, create, and code.

Features

Kit includes

  • 5x5 RGB Matrix Breakout
  • 1x5 male header
  • 1x5 female right-angle header

We've designed this breakout board so that you can solder on the piece of right-angle female header and pop it straight onto the bottom left 5 pins on your Raspberry Pi's GPIO header (pins 1, 3, 5, 7, 9).

Software

We've put together a Python library to make it really easy to drive the 5x5 RGB Matrix Breakout, along with a handful of examples to show what it can do. 

You can also use this breakout with Raspberry Pi Pico and other RP2040 boards, using C++ or Pirate brand MicroPython.

Notes

Dimensions: 19x29x3.5mm.

21 customer reviews

2 years ago
Bright and saturated, and a doddle to program. So good that after 3 days I went and bought the 7x11 version too!
by Timothy about 5x5 RGB Matrix Breakout via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Very well made board, and just the right size for building into a voice assistant project to show activity and notifications - just needs to create a 3D printed reflector to get the patterns.
by Andrew about 5x5 RGB Matrix Breakout via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
This breakout was bought to go with the Pico Explorer board (which is awesome to get started with), and is a very good addition as it plugs in and a bit of coding and you are away. First off was the demo code, very good to show the colours and as a pixel test as it cycles all the pixels through each colour. However, that was not enough so I wrote my own code to do a countdown from 10 to 1 in green, then change to a flashing 0 in red. The code then goes on to do other things but the effect is really good. The only drawback is the LED's in the matrix are not addressable which would have made it easier to code. But the advantage and fun coding are a code use of time and learning. Once you workout the grid, letters or numbers are a doddle. I should note at this point that there might be an easier way to code the numbers, but it works and is good fun. Now to get some more ;-)
by Jonathan about 5x5 RGB Matrix Breakout via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Beautiful little board. So simple to use (as is the whole breakout garden range) in both C and Micropython on the Pi Pico with either the Explorer base or the Pico breakout garden pack. I've been playing with it displaying different colours depending on the temperature read from the BME270 breakout on a Pico in C and it's great fun.
by DAVID about 5x5 RGB Matrix Breakout via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
with the Breakout Garden, ths was really easy to hook up and actvate. to make it even easier, I wrote a Node-RED node to allow it to be controlled with flow-based programming. (https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-red-contrib-5x5rgb-rpi)
by Ross about 5x5 RGB Matrix Breakout via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Spot on product, adds nicely to breakout garden. Simple to set up and very bright and clear LEDs. 5* service again
by Philip about 5x5 RGB Matrix Breakout via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
The LEDs are bright and the Matrix is easy to controll with the python library. The only problem I had is that there is no documentation of the library but with the examples on GitHub I was able to figure everything out.
by Felix about 5x5 RGB Matrix Breakout via REVIEWS.io