This was our first ever event! We had a great time and great turnout - a grand total of 25 signups and 19 people present! We were very happy to see so many people interested in learning about electronics and programming.

The event was a workshop on how to program an RP2040 board to work with a MAX7219 LED matrix. The workshop was a great success! We covered the basics of the RP2040:

  • What are the GPIO pins? What protocols can they support?
  • What is a signal? What is a clock?
  • What is a library? But the main idea was to create a library that would allow us to easily control the MAX7219 LED matrix. We covered the MAX7219 datasheet:
  • What is a datasheet?
  • What is a register?
  • What is a command?
  • What registers and commands does the MAX7219 have?
  • How do we send data to the MAX7219? (CLK, DIN, CS)
  • What data do we send to the MAX7219?

Check out the slides:

People wrote some really cool programs! Here’s a video of one of the daisy chained displays showing an animation: