Today I’m going to make a review about the Freetronics Doted Matrix Displays or also called the DMD 32×16 Red. I’ll be showing some examples and how you can get the DMD up and running in a few minutes.
When you receive your DMD It comes in a nice package.
 
Inside includes everything you need to make this DMD work with your Arduino.  It brings 2×8 IDC cable with a small PCB that allow you to connect your DMD to the Arduino digital pins D6 to D13. And it also includes a getting started guide (which you must read before using your display).
 
Let’s take a closer look to this DMD. The cable above is connected to the LEFT socket of the display. If you want maximum brightness you need connect a power supply to those power terminals in the middle of the display. If you want to add more displays simply insert another displays on the RIGHT socket.
Note:Â Those VCC/Ground terminals can’t be connected to your Arduino… Those terminals are to be used with a External power supply!
Download the Library:
After you connect everything as the picture above shows you it’s time to download a library for this DMD that Freetronics provide. Click here to download. After you download the library simply install it on your Arduino IDE (follow the README file).
Watch the Demo below:
(The Demo starts at: 1:30)
Note: I apologize for the video quality. All my videos are recorded with an iPad which doesn’t have the best video quality. So this video doesn’t show how cool is this DMD… The light looks way better in the reality.
Where you can buy one?
Click here to get one! They also sell other colors if you want to.
Thanks so much for reading my tutorials and reviews, I hope you found this useful.
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This would be fun to use in making a simple ‘breakout’ or ‘pong’ kind of game with. Think it’s possible? Maybe i’ll give it a try after I finish my other projects!
ps. great site! always look forward to the new posts.
Yes Mike,
That’s a great project to do with the DMD.
I was working on a pong game, but then I had to finish other projects. And right now I have a lot of work to do.
But that’s something I want to do.
Here’s a great pong project with Arduino:
http://123led.wordpress.com/about/
i am not having dmd connector to connect to display board i got tx,rx and another one terminal from led board how to connect to display board and where to change the code sir can u please help me with this…………