64x64 LED Matrix + Bonnet for MQTT Connection Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

[ss2432]

Hello-!

I am working on a project to control a led matrix through a Unity mobile application.
I was able to write a C++ program to control the led matrix as I wanted. (Thanks to the Adafruit supports!)

Pretty much all the components I used in this project are from here. (Please see the image attached)

1. Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
2. LED Matrix (64x64 RGB LED Matrix - 2.5mm Pitch)
3. Adafruit RGB Matrix Bonnet for Raspberry Pi
4. hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix library

My goal is to control this matrix with a mobile device anywhere through an MQTT connection.
In terms of a server and clients, I am thinking of making both my led matrix (with RPi+RGBBonnet) and the mobile app as clients that subscribe to an MQTT broker for bi-directional communication. (publishing animation status and users changing the animation properties) Starting with 1 matrix and 1 user, but later, I want to add more led matrixes to the MQTT server.

First of all, I would like to know if I can do this with the Adafruit MQTT broker. (RPi/RGB Bonnet <-> Adafruit MQTT Broker <-> Mobile App)

One difficulty I am having right now is that most of the MQTT tutorials for RPi are with Python. But my program is written in C++.
So I tried to find possible ways to implement this MQTT system with the C++ program in RPi. Here are a few options that I think might work.

1. Adding Paho MQTT C++ Client code to my led control C++
2. IPC between Python (Python for MQTT client) and C++ (Cpp for LED matrix control)
3. Wired-communication (Serial- with Multimasters) between EPS8266 (Python for MQTT Client) and RPi+RGB Bonnet (Cpp for LED matrix control)

I am pretty new to this. So please bear with me if none of the options above makes sense.
If all feasible, 1. and 2. are good because I don't need any additional hardware. But I am worried about getting flickering/noise in my led matrix if the RPi processes something other than the led matrix. 3. could be good because I see a lot of tutorials using EPS8266 with Python for MQTT. I can use the Adafruit ESP8266 MQTT library. Plus, since the MQTT processing is separated from the main RPi (Master), I might not have any performance issues in my led matrix. (I also have two of https://www.adafruit.com/product/2821)

I might also try C++ WebSocket communication since I see more threads online regarding this method. But for the expandability and later IoT integration, I want to try MQTT this time if possible.
Please let me know your thought on this and if you have any suggestions or references, I would love to hear from you.
Again, I am not really experienced, so ease of implementation is important, too.

Thanks a lot!