HUB75 - how to reliably drive two panel rows 80cm apart from one Pi3B+?

1

Hey all, first time here and super new to LED panels so bear with me.

For an art project, I have to run a poem and its translation parallely on two rows of HUB75 panels.

I’m running a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with an Adafruit Triple LED Matrix Bonnet driving two parallel rows of P5 outdoor HUB75 panels , one row is 5 panels daisy chained together. The panels are controlled via a custom C scroller using the rpi-rgb-led-matrix library.

I made it all work and it looked so beautifully but now the artist I’m working with wants the panels to be spaced ca. 80cm apart from each other and I can’t find any fitting data cables to connect the panels to the Pi via the bonnet. I tried generic 60cm IDC ribbon cables provided by the artist, and they did not work.

If anyone has a tip for me on how to solve this issue I would be so grateful as I’m trying to avoid having to set up a second Pi to control the second row because I’d have to sync them as the poem and the translation have to run in parallel. (I’ve attached a pic of the first working test using 4 panels - i sadly don’t have any from the back rn)

To summarize: Any tips how to reliably drive two panel rows 80cm apart from one Pi3B+ (+Adafruit bonnet)?

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IMG_40821920×1440 762 KB

2

What does this “not work” mean? I tried a 60cm, 80 and even 100cm ribbon cables and it generally works. The only issue I seen - some additional glitches in sometimes.

3

The panels plugged into the Bonnets Port 1 showed only random colors and flickering and the panels plugged into the Port 2 showed nothing. So sadly it was not just additional glitching. When I tried the setup with the shorter cables again afterwards everything worked normally. Can you maybe share a link to the cables you were using?

4

Sorry, I don’t have a link. I used the cables from client.