AC/DC adapter + travel plug adapter, RGB matrix woes

End-Of-Life Products & Services Tech support before 2012
#1

Just a few words of advice to Seeedstudio customers interested in buying either of the items from the subject of this post…

  1. The travel plug EU/US adapter meant to be used with this wall wart is useless. Its shape prevents you from plugging it into damn near anything (the EU sockets are circular, the adapter isn’t). Save yourself the hassle and find an adapter in a local store.

  2. The new RGB LED matrices are strikingly different than the old ones (sold up to a month or so ago):

  • the “pixel” size is different - the new ones have smaller emitters
  • the brightness is different - the new ones are noticeably brighter
  • the current draw seems to be different - the new ones seem to heat up faster
  • the package is different - the sides are white, not black, and there’s a lip now (the old ones had completely smooth/flat sides)

If you’re planning on building an RGB display and you’ve decided to buy these in two batches (like i did), you’re out of luck. You can probably fix the brightness with the trimpots, but the difference in emitter size will be pretty obvious unless you diffuse it a lot. Also, the differences in packaging will complicate designing an enclosure.

#2

Hi,

Sorry to the inconvenience brought. And thank you for your advices.
But for the adapter, I don’t really understand what do you mean about the useless of it.
For the RGB matrix, we are sorry not updating the new version info on the product page. And we will improve that later.

Thanks,

Steve