Mark thank you for your input. I don’t know how you found the manual on the Seeed site because I could not get to it (except via your link) even knowing from your post that it was there. I could really do with the manual for V3.0b.
It would be useful if someone from Seeed could add some comment regarding the Newbie experience because in my view it is not good. Documentation is spread all over the place and is hard to find. Much of it is not compatible with the device I have or is lacking - for example the section on this site http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/Rainbowduino_v3.0 titled “Using with RGB LED Matrix” is blank.
I want to use the Rainbowduino to create an interactive modern lamp for a customer commission and I selected Arduino compatible on the basis of the claim that Arduino is “intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.” However I am not naive and I do not expect power service for a $25 component.
A first step would be getting one or the other of my computers to recognise the device on a USB port. My Arduino is recognised so it would be good to know just for a start whether or not the two boards have the same USB interface or where the differences are. So far I have swapped ports, cables and computers (all Linux though different versions) as well as play around with access permissions. Could someone from Seeed respond or am I on the wrong forum? Searching the error via Google does not help because it is littered with unsolved posts and lucky fixes. 