The TroPi is an LED board for the Raspberry Pi which can be used on it's own to add light to your projects or as part of a trophy design using the additional perspex trophy kit.

This guide will get you started connecting the board to your Raspberry Pi and switching on the LEDs from Python

The TroPi kit will contain:

• 1 x TroPi add on board
• 8 x M2.5 by 6mm nylon posts
• 4 x M2.5 black nylon screws
• 4 x M2.5 black nylon nuts

You will also need:

• A small Phillips head screwdriver
• Either a Raspberry Pi B+, 2, 3, 3B+ Zero or Zero W
• An SD card with Raspbian installed (we used Stretch, but you can use your preferred OS)

Installing onto the Raspberry Pi

The TroPi can be used with the Raspberry Pi B+, 2, 3, 3B+ Zero or Zero W.

Make sure before starting to attach the TroPi, that your Raspberry Pi is powered off.

Zero or Zero W

1) To install onto the Raspberry Pi Zero or Zero W, take four of the posts and the four screws and attach them to the Raspberry Pi so the posts are facing upwards and the nuts are on the back of the Pi.

2) Take the TroPi board and place it over the 40 pins on the Raspberry Pi so that the four posts are lined up with the holes on the TroPi.

3) Use the four screws from the kit to secure the TroPi into place.

B+, 2, 3, 3B+

1) To install onto the Raspberry Pi B+, 2, 3 or 3B+, take two of the posts and two of the screws and attach the posts to the Raspberry Pi in the holes either side of the 40 pin header.

2) Take the TroPi board and place it over the 40 pins on the Raspberry Pi so that the two posts are lined up with the holes on the TroPi.

Make sure that the TroPi board is parallel to the Raspberry Pi and not sitting at an angle on your Pi header.

3) Use two of the screws to secure the TroPi into place.

Now you've got your TroPi installed on your Raspberry Pi, we can now install the software needed to run the TroPi.

Install TroPi Software

Plug in and power on your Raspberry Pi.

Open a terminal session and type:

git clone https://github.com/piborg/tropi

This will clone the GitHub Tropi repository to a local folder called "tropi".

Running an Example

Once you have the TroPi repository locally, try out running one of the example scripts. Inside the terminal window, navigate to the TroPi folder using

cd tropi

Let's try to run the colourwave.py script. Type into your terminal window:

python colourwave.py

... and watch the pretty colours swirl <3

If you have any issues with getting started, please head over to our forum to ask a question.