LED Featherwing w/o Feather Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

[theawc24]

Hi, so let me just start out by saying I have no idea how the whole feather/featherwing system works, and I'm trying to fill in pieces. I got an 8x16 LED featherwing matrix and am intending to use it with my RPI3. I didn't realize that featherwings are meant to be used with a feather, which I just learned about today. I know I should've bought a backpack, but is there anyway to use the featherwing straight to the Pi? I have it connected with a breadboard to the GPIO 3v, ground, and 2 i2c pins, but I'm unable to detect it through i2cdetect.

Also as a side note for me, I'm assuming I will be unable to use the Arduino IDE, as it seems like it is trying to upload to a feather. Is that right?

Thanks

[adafruit_support_carter]

It should be possible to get this to work. You are focusing on the correct pins to use. Did you solder headers onto the FeatherWing? Also, be careful jumpering into the end of the ribbon cable. It can be confusing which Pi GPIO pins end up where.

Here's a general guide that discussed Feather and FeatherWings:
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather

Correct - you generally don't want to use Arduino for what you are attempting. For driving the FeatherWing from the Pi, first keep using i2cdetect until you can see the address show up. Then you'll know the basic wiring is good. Then you'll want to go through the Blinka installation here:
https://learn.adafruit.com/circuitpytho ... x/overview
which will then let you use the CircuitPython library:
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-8x1 ... cuitpython

[theawc24]

Everything is all soldered up. After closer look at the pins of both my Pi and the Wing, I realized the I2C was connected to the wrong pins on the Pi. They are different from the ones showed in the learning page for the featherwing, I needed pins 3 & 5 and I was trying 27 & 28.

Thank you for pointing me to Blinka, I'll be sure to use that to achieve my project.

Thanks again!