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The IS31FL3731 will let you get back to that classic LED matrix look, with a nice upgrade! This I2C LED driver chip has the ability to PWM each individual LED in a 16x9 grid so you can have beautiful LED lighting effects, without a lot of pin twiddling. Simply tell the chip which LED on the grid you want lit, and what brightness and it's all taken care of for you.

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The IS31FL3731 is a nice little chip - it can use 2.7-5.5V power and logic so it's flexible for use with any microcontroller. You can set the address so up to 4 matrices can share an I2C bus. Inside is enough RAM for 8 separate frames of display memory, so you can set up multiple frames of an animation and flip them to be displayed with a single command.

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This chip is great for making small LED displays, and we even designed the breakout to match up with our ready-to-go LED grids in red, yellow, green, blue and white. Sandwich the driver and matrix breakout, solder together for a compact setup. Or you can DIY your own setup, just follow the LED grid schematic in the IS31FL3731 datasheet.

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To get you going fast, we spun up a custom-made PCB in the STEMMA QT form factor, making it easy to interface with. The STEMMA QT connectors are compatible with the SparkFun Qwiic I2C connectors. This allows you to make solderless connections between your development board and the IS31FL3731 or to chain it with a wide range of other sensors and accessories using a compatible cable. The IS31 is compatible with 3-5V power and logic, so it's ready to go with just about any microcontroller or microcomputer board!

Please note this does not come with any LEDs, you can pick up a matching LED matrix from us or DIY / do your own.

Pick up a driver board and your favorite color LEDs to match. You'll need to do some basic soldering to attach the driver backpack and matrix together, and run wires to your microcontroller, but its not too hard. Then install our Arduino or CircuitPython libraries to get some LEDs blinking immediately. Our library is Adafruit_GFX compatible so you can draw lines, circles, text, and small bitmaps if you want more graphics control.

There are two versions of this board - the STEMMA QT version shown above, and the original header-only version shown below. Code works the same on both!

This guide was first published on Mar 09, 2016. It was last updated on Mar 28, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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