Tindie

Like many, I was frustrated at my 3D printers still receiving power from my Raspberry Pi's even when turned off. So when I heard of the Power BLough-R, I ordered 5 of them immediately. (2 for my printers, and 3 for friends and extras in case I screw up in assembling one.) The kits arrived SUPER FAST (Got to me in the States in less than a week, which quite frankly amazed me) and the soldering was pretty easy, even for a greenhorn like me. Works perfectly, and paired with the 3D printed case, they look totally professional, MUCH nicer than the dodgy hand-hacked data-only USB cables I was using, which I can now happily retire.

Shane T | July 30, 2020

Top stuff

For TinyPICO Matrix Shield

Really useful board and works flawlessly. One thing to note, which you would get hints of if you watch the seller's youtube channel or look at some other listings; if you want to use this with a Pixel Purse display, you will need to solder an additional 8x2 header to the display, because the PxMatrix library uses both the input and output ports.

Hamish | May 29, 2020

excellent gizmo

For Feather Huzzah 32 Debug Shield

Perfect if you want an easy way to debug an esp32 feather!
just solder on the headers and off you go :)

Hans | April 26, 2020

Great product

Good kit, easy to assemble, all parts are there .
Good kit, easy to assemble, all parts are there .

Chris | April 9, 2020

Excellent product

I got the RGB matrix working with dupont cables, but it was a mess. So I decided to neaten things up and order the ESP32 shield, and am glad I did. Very neat and now I can hang my display up on the wall, plus don't need to power the ESP seperately which is a bonus. Plus Brians youtube videos are useful. Thanks!

Wim | April 2, 2020

Just a great little board. Must have for LED Matrix panels

When wiring up my 64x32 panel, came across this nifty little board and ordered it right away. Ships fast, has plenty of online documentation and above all prevents a rats nest of wires coming out of the panel.

Nigel | March 24, 2020

A fantastic shield

For TinyPICO Matrix Shield

This shield along with a tiny pico made setting up my matrix display a doddle. Code loaded board powered up and after a few seconds the time appeared. The board was easy to assemble with the use of the informative guide on Brians page. Very impressed

Spencer | March 11, 2020

Great kit. Gets the job done!

Excellent kit. It's top quality and was delivered really quickly. Documentation is great and the example code got me up and running really quickly. I used it for the Pixel Purse 16*32 screens. It works great with 2 screens daisy chained, but with 3 there is some colour tearing (Not a fault of this kit, but a limitation on the screens I was using).

Michael | Feb. 19, 2020

Power BLough-R: Great for OctoPi 3D Printers

I bought a handful of Power BLough-R kits to polish up on soldering and upgrade from using kapton tape on my USB cables for my 3D printers. The packages came relatively quick for international mail. I wish they were more streamlined, but that would make soldering more difficult... I highly recommend these!

Davide | Jan. 30, 2020

Great kit, quick to assemble, works perfectly.

I have a 64x64 3mm pitch matrix display from China and this shield works without issues with it. Assembly / soldering was also very easy and quick. Using the display without shield would mean a mess of wires but this is a very neat and tidy solution with pretty small footprint. The kit actually comes with two power connectors, I suppose for if you want to use two displays.

Nigel | Jan. 29, 2020

Fantastic bit of kit

Have watched a lot of Brian's videos on youtube and this shield saves the spaghetti of wiring when working with matrix panels. The online institutions and assembly were easy to follow. The board is well made and thought out so will have fun with the programming. I have ordered another along with one for the tiny pico

Gunther | Jan. 29, 2020

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

As a user of OctoPrint and a Creality printer, I had the (presumably well-known) issue that the Raspberry powers the printer via its USB port - not fully, but enough to keep the LCD on and the fans spinning, which is suboptimal to say the least. I had initially taped over the power pin of the USB cable itself, which took forever to maneuver into place and came off every time I had to do anything with the cable. I'm also a terrible solderer, so this seemed like the best solution. I stuck it in the 3D printable case found on Thingiverse, and it's been doing its thing ever since.

Julian | Jan. 20, 2020

Just what I needed

For Feather Huzzah 32 Debug Shield

Swift response from Brian on a question, and to check that I really didn't need the 10pin cable.
I used stacking headers (from pimoroni who are always excellent) and connected up via some jumper wires to a FT4232H CJMCU board which I already had. (My HUZZAH32 didn't have stacking headers, or I wouldn't have needed this board.)

I didn't experience the problem of not being able to program via the original USB cable. Selecting which method to use for programming via platformio.ini was as easy as changing the "upload_protocol" setting between "esptool" for serial, or my custom "cjmcu_4232" setting for JTAG, where most people would use "esp-prog". Debug is enabled for me by setting "debug_tool" to "cjmcu_4232" or for most people "esp-prog".

FWIW, I found it easiest to fork https://github.com/platformio/platform-espressif32 and https://github.com/espressif/openocd-esp32, then work from my checkout, using "platform = https://github.com/my/platform-espressif32.git" and "platform_packages = tool-openocd-esp32 @ https://github.com/my/openocd-esp32.git" so that changes I made to these wouldn't be overwritten by subsequent updates and I can rebase when there are updates that I want. Note that openocd needs to be configured, built and installed to the same platformio dir using "./configure --prefix=$(pwd)", but that seems to be a minor quirk.

Dorin | Jan. 20, 2020

Cool!!!

Everything works according to expectations, meaning perfect!
Thanks Brian for the fast delivery and the good packaging!
Thanks for the work you have done and shared with us!

Luke | Jan. 15, 2020

Great product & Great Value

Super shield & exceeded my expectations - well worth the price. Happy to recommend this product & Seller.

Delivery
Shipped quickly and arrived within a few days. Well packed.

Soldering etc
Pretty quick to solder and easy to follow instructions
Initially I powered the unit up with reverse polarity & fortunately both hte ESP32 & the Shield survived. Not recommended to do this, but happy it didn't give off smoke :)

Examples Sketches
Managed to get all the examples running on my P2.5 64x64 matrix with an ESP32 D1 Mini.
(Some are designed for 32x64, but still ran on the 64x64 in half screen. Remember to change the #defines to match your Panel in each example.)

PROs
- Initially I had wired up the panel using just Dupont cables between the ESP32 & the Panel, which worked fine, until I wanted to run a second example. Then I realised that I couldn't upload to the ESP32 when it was connected to the Panel...so that became a bit of a pain having to swap in/out the Dupont cables. So I quickly decided to order the Shield & it was then trivial to insert/remove the ESP32 as required.
- A very tidy solution with minimal wiring.
- Shield is well designed and lots of useful info on the silk screen. There are many unused GPIO pins exposed across the PCB, which will be useful for custom/expansion projects.
- Great value, docs, examples & support, don't waste your time & effort on anything else.

CONs
- Can't think of any @ this great price.

Ben | Dec. 31, 2019

This is what my 3D printer was missing

Works like a charm, and worth every penny. Much better than any hack I would have come up with. A must-have for any 3D printer in my opinion!

Patrick | Dec. 30, 2019

Couldn't be happier

For Christmas THPCB3

My tree arrived amazingly fast and it was super fun to put together! I can't recommend highly enough!

Michael | Dec. 27, 2019

works very good

The Product works as expected. The Assembly is really self explaining. (Another 30 Characters......)

Alex-Justin | Dec. 25, 2019

easy way of working with led matrix screens :)

Ordered the D1 mini matrix shield to get the led matrix working for 36C3.
easy to setup and program to make every working.

Zac | Dec. 18, 2019

Great Board. Great Support

Bought this board from Brian a couple of days back, and the whole process from great from start to finish.
Tetris Time looks so cool !

Had a couple of questions regarding the led matrix I was about to buy, and Brian helped me out to ensure that I was getting the right one.
Level of after sales support offered was fantastic, and would highly recommend any of his products, purely based on that fact alone.

Andreas | Dec. 18, 2019

Great Kit

It is well designed and easy to assemble. Thanks Brian also for the info about the different panels. Very nice project!

Josh | Dec. 13, 2019

Great board!

I have 3 of these running right now with two 32x16 panels each, powered by USB (brightness=~75) and they run rock solid!
With both panels, scrolling text, an image, and the time over both panels, I have never seen the total amperage consumption exceed 150ma via USB

Gabriel | Dec. 12, 2019

Very nice, tech Christmas

For Christmas 3 PCB

The product is very, very nice. It is not so easy to assemble the LEDs, but when you finished, it worth the effort because the result is super. I bought all three versions: green, white, and black, and all of them are beautiful.

Brian | Dec. 9, 2019

Great project and excellent support.

For Christmas 3 PCB

All components provided with some extra LEDs. Clear online instructions and great email support when I made a soldering error. My grandson loves the tree lit up.

Giorgio | Dec. 5, 2019

Awesome Kit

Very usefull Kit Clock for led panel matrix, easy to mount ad very beatiful clock effect " catches eyes ".

Ton | Dec. 5, 2019

TOP,TOP.

Iam using it for tetris clock and it works as expected. One of the advantages is no messing with cables.
So iam very happy with it.

regards , Tobo.

Giorgio | Dec. 5, 2019

Awesome Kit

Very usefull Kit Clock for led panel matrix, easy to mount ad very beatiful clock effect " catches eyes ".

Stefan | Dec. 2, 2019

Cool life made easy

For BLough Alarm Clock - Shield for Wemos D1 Mini

My first (not last) project with these led panels - the Tetris clock. This shield is perfect. Working out oft the box. No ugly wires anymore.
I seriously need to check out what else to do with this panels. Very cool and easy with Brians' shield.

Mark | Nov. 27, 2019

Excellent kit! Useful and fun to assemble.

Love my BLough Alarm Clock. Well designed, well documented and fun to assemble for any electronics hobbyist. Highly recommended.

Gabriel | Sept. 23, 2019

Careful to details. Very useful product

It is very easy to assemble/solder the kit. It worked from the first moment as I expected (I confess I follow Brian on both Youtube and Twitter so I knew before what should happen). It wasn't necessary, so far, to ask for support but I'm sure the communication with Brian is more than ok (I saw from other messages how kindly he is). Overall, I will buy again and I will recommend to my friends his Tindie shop.

Gabriel | Sept. 23, 2019

Excellent!

For TinyPICO Matrix Shield

I bought also a D1 mini matrix shield and I have a very pleasant experience. As the D1 version, this one is also clear how to assemble/solder the kit. Also, it worked from the first moment, and I tested with two models of led matrix. Very nice product. I appreciate very much all of Brian's accomplishments and also the Seon's TinyPICO. They are both on my subscription list on both Youtube and Twitter.

Andrew | Aug. 15, 2019

Making Life Very Easy and Decluttered

These are fantastic, So good that I bought one, and then another, and.. another!

Without dupont cables everywhere and the ESP hanging out in the wind, it's easy to mount the matrix somewhere and not have to worry about it falling apart.

Stephen | Aug. 9, 2019

Very Clever Idea