The Pi Lite is a large LED matrix display for scrolling text and graphics. It's an exciting way to get a Raspberry Pi to do something physical and fun. It's an easy plug in add on, so no soldering or special skills are required.

The Pi Lite mixes the highly popular Arduino "Lots of LED's" shield by Jimmy Rogers with the world of the Raspberry Pi. Using standard serial communications, it's really simple to send text and graphics to the 126 LED's. The matrix is powered from an ATMega328p processor which means all the processing of driving the 126 LED's is off loaded from the Pi's processor. This frees the Pi's processor and GPIO for other functions.

Features:

- On board ATMega328p

- High quality gold plated PCB

- 126 Red LEDS (there will be a bright white version coming soon)

- Data is driven by the Pi serial UART (you may need to setup your serial port, see below docs).

- Runs at 5 volts off the Pi supply (49ma max)

- Preloaded software, can be used out of the box to display the following

- Scrolling Text (speed variable)

- Bar Graph (vertical 14 bars)

- VU Meter (horizontal 2 bars)

- Frame buffer (for graphics and animation)

- Individual Pixels (turn them on, off or toggle)

- Pre-built / Plug and Code

- Able to install 6 pin ISP or 6 pin FTDI Headers to the ATMega328P for firmware upgrades or your own sketches

- ATMega328p analog pins are broken onto standard holes (just like the Jimmy Roger shield)

- I2C from the ATMega328p is available on pins A4 and A5 for daisy chaining of Pi-Lite to create a bigger display

- Made in China.