“The Galactic Unicorn is a nice display. It seems to have better diffusion and control over low brightnesses than typical RGB pixels. It doesn't have the super higher brightness of other RGB pixels but arguably that's a positive as it keeps the current capped at 1A (Pimoroni's documented value). The small speaker on the back is surprisingly loud for such a small device.
It's easy to connect to i2c peripherals but not so easy to connect to analogue devices or i2s ones. I would have liked for at least one of the ADC-capable GPIO to be made available on a connector. Or use the existing connectors and have some PCB tracks to cut to get rid of the pullup resistors for anyone who wants to use i2s or analogue peripherals.
It comes with two metal pins for a stand. These work well for the Inky Frame (with a heavy battery pack changing the centre of gravity) but not so well on the Galactic Unicorn from a brief experiment. I don't think they are high enough on the board so it stands near vertical and is prone to being knocked over. I'd imagine the weight of a battery pack would help.
There's a lot you can do with the board and its Pi Pico W in MicroPython. I've switched to C++ as I need to squeeze a bit more performance from it. I've added an external microphone module and enhanced the Pimoroni Blunicorn software to use that. I've also added a guitar/instrument tuner feature to it. All of that can be found on Instructables, links below.
https://www.instructables.com/Making-a-Guitar-Tuner-and-Audio-Spectrum-Analyser-/
https://www.instructables.com/Adding-a-Microphone-to-Pi-Pico-W-on-Pimoroni-Galac/”
“This is a gorgeous display and thanks to the use of a standardised controller can be used for just about anything, from even timing displays to clocks or tickers.
Wifi adds a lot of flexibility: You can remotely upload code using WebREPL, you can use it to synchronise time via NTP, pull in weather data from a web API or even connect it to an MQTT broker and display some live data. The addition of buttons along both edges makes for a nice self-contained unit.
I like that the .dxf files are available so that you can easily make an enclosure and it comes from a company with a proven track record for customer support.”
“The RGB Lights are superb and can go super bright. The onboard demo scripts are a lovely starting point on how the libarys work and it has got a lot of potential! Planning on buying more once I have suffeciently wrangled this one :).”
“A great source of fun! I love Pimoroni for making PCBs beautiful and this matrix is no exception. It looks beautiful and its legs make it super easy to use as a desktop toy.
The LEDs are superb, bright enough to be visible on a sunny day and also provide a nice glow at night.
Plenty of buttons make it easy to add many controls to your application. So it's just a matter of writing a handler for buttons pressed while when there is a limited amount of buttons you have to build complex sequences to control all features you want.
Finally, Pimoroni SDK is easy to use so it's almost plug and play. I spent some time to understand how to import all required libraries if I intend to keep my project in a separate location from Pimoroni's Pico examples directory, but anyway, quite easy to sort out all setup tasks.
So overall I'm pleased with the product and recommend it to anybody who wants to play with LED matrix.”
