Working with Adafruit's RGB Matrix Bonnet
I opted to follow the library author's docs after using the tutorial to get familiar with the hardware. The library and CLI tools are at:
https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix
Clean up un-needed cruft:
sudo apt-get autoremove --purge bluez bluez-firmware pi-bluetooth triggerhappy pigpio
Install some needed dependencies and tools:
sudo apt-get install joe git python2.7-dev python-pillow python3-dev python3-pillow libgraphicsmagick++-dev libwebp-dev
Clone the repo:
git clone https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix.git
Build things:
cd rpi-rgb-led-matrix/ make -C examples-api-use cd utils/ make cd ../bindings/python/ make build-python make build-python PYTHON=$(which python3) sudo make install-python sudo make install-python PYTHON=$(which python3)
((get some coffee....))
The Python build above, obviously, only builds for Python 3. I'm not going to bother with 2.x...figure if I'm going to play with Python, I should learn the future rather than the past.
Another note about the build steps I've followed above, is that they assume you're going to pass the correct argument (--led-gpio-mapping=adafruit-hat or --led-gpio-mapping=adafruit-hat-pwm as appropriate) to tell the tool/command/whatever to use the Adafruit Bonnet.
And I lied... I just read further in the Python library docs, and the author has this:
Also interesting: Python3 is a little bit slower than Python2.7. So if you can, stick with Python2.7 for now.
Heavy sigh...I've gone back and edited the build commands above to include building for Python 2.7.