Building a Real-Time Ray Marching Renderer for the Cosmic Unicorn

How I brought 3D ray-traced graphics to a tiny 32×32 LED matrix

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The Challenge: 3D Graphics on a Microcontroller

🤖 Disclaimer: AI has been involved in writing this article

When I first laid eyes on Pimoroni’s Cosmic Unicorn — a gorgeous 32×32 RGB LED matrix powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico W — I knew I had to push its limits. Sure, scrolling text and simple animations are fun, but what about real 3D graphics? What about ray tracing?

The problem was obvious: ray tracing is computationally expensive, and the Pico W, while capable, isn’t exactly a GPU powerhouse. But that’s where the fun begins.

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