Cosmic-Unicorn

Have you ever wanted to create a physical display that responds to real-world interactions? In this tutorial, we’ll build a fascinating IoT project that combines Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), WiFi, and LED matrix displays to create a responsive system where rotating a physical device instantly updates a display. You need a timeular tracker and a cosmic unicorn 32x32 matrix to actually be able to build this. But even if you do not own any of these components you can still learn how to setup a web server on a Raspberry PI Pico w and how to use the bartolome-ble-toolkit to connect to bluetooth periphals.

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.