Build Your Own Tidbyt

1. Solder the GPIO4 ↔ GPIO18 jumper on the back of the Bonnet — a single ~2 cm wire between the two labeled pads. The Adafruit Bonnet guide shows the exact pads. This unlocks the adafruit-hat-pwm mode for far less flicker and better color depth.
2. Seat the Bonnetonto the Pi's 40-pin header — push all the way down.
3. Plug the panel's HUB75 ribboninto the Bonnet's keyed connector, and wire the panel's 5V power pigtail into the Bonnet's screw terminal (red = +, black = −).
4. Plug the 5V/4A barrel plug into the Bonnet. Do not power the Pi separately — the Bonnet feeds it over the header.

1. Install Raspberry Pi Imager.
2. Choose Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) — no desktop. A GUI just wastes resources on an embedded device like this.
3. Click the gear / Edit settings before writing. Set: hostname tronbyt, a username + password, your WiFi SSID/password/country, timezone, and enable SSH.
4. Write the card, insert it, power on, wait ~60 s, then SSH in:

ssh <username>@tronbyt.local

a. Run the setup script. This single command does almost everything: it installs Docker and Git, clones the server into ~/tronbyt-server, and starts it for you. When it finishes, your server is already running on port 8000.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tronbyt/server-docker-compose/main/rpi_setup.sh | bash

b. Give your user permission to talk to Docker. The script adds you to the docker group, but that only takes effect in a newlogin session. Confirm you're in the group, adding yourself if not:

groups                          # look for "docker" in the list
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER    # run this if "docker" is missing

Then activate the group — either log out and SSH back in, or apply it to the current shell:

newgrp docker     # or: exit, then ssh back in
docker ps         # should run with NO sudo and NO error

c. Confirm it's up. From the project directory the script created:

cd ~/tronbyt-server
docker compose ps     # should show one container, healthy, 0.0.0.0:8000->8000

Open http://tronbyt.local:8000in your laptop browser (or use your Pi's IP). Default login is admin / password — change it immediately. (There's a built-in reset-password admin command if you ever lock yourself out.)

services:
  web:
    # …existing config (image, ports, volumes)…
    dns:
      - 1.1.1.1
      - 8.8.8.8

cd ~/tronbyt-server
docker compose up -d
docker compose exec web sh -c "nslookup api.weather.gov"   # should return an IP

1. On the Home page, click New Tronbyt.
2. Give it a name (e.g. "Living Room") and choose device type "Raspberry Pi" from the dropdown — the plain one, not"Raspberry Pi Wide" (that's for a 128×64 setup). Your single 64×32 panel uses plain "Raspberry Pi."
3. Save. The server assigns an 8-character hex device-id (e.g. d8e59932) shown on the Home screen.
4. Your endpoint URL is: http://<pi-host-or-ip>:8000/<device-id>/next— you'll paste this into the tronberry installer next.

On the same Pi, run the installer. It applies the flicker fixes, installs packages, downloads the prebuilt binary, and sets up a systemd service:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tronbyt/tronberry/HEAD/install.sh)"

It will prompt you to:

• Apply flicker-fix optimizations — say yes. It disables onboard audio & Bluetooth, isolates CPU core 3, and blacklists the audio module. These only take effect after a reboot.
• Paste your Tronbyt URL. Because the server runs on this same Pi, use localhost, not the .local hostname (see the warning below): http://localhost:8000/<device-id>/next.
• Provide extra rpi-rgb-led-matrix flags. For a 64×32 Adafruit panel on a Zero 2 W with the jumper mod:

--led-rows=32 --led-cols=64 --led-chain=1 --led-gpio-mapping=adafruit-hat-pwm --led-slowdown-gpio=2

mkdir -p ~/tronberry
curl -fL -o ~/tronberry/tronberry \
  https://github.com/tronbyt/tronberry/releases/latest/download/tronberry
chmod +x ~/tronberry/tronberry

TRONBYT_URL="http://localhost:8000/<your-device-id>/next"
FLAGS="--led-rows=32 --led-cols=64 --led-chain=1 --led-gpio-mapping=adafruit-hat-pwm --led-slowdown-gpio=2"

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/tronberry.service > /dev/null <<EOL
[Unit]
Description=Tronberry LED Matrix Service
After=network-online.target

[Service]
ExecStart=\$HOME/tronberry/tronberry \$TRONBYT_URL \$FLAGS
WorkingDirectory=\$HOME/tronberry
StandardOutput=inherit
StandardError=inherit
Restart=always
Nice=-10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOL

Enable, start, and reboot. The reboot is what activates the flicker fixes — without it, tronberry will start and immediately exit with "snd_bcm2835 … Exiting; fix the above first," because the sound module is still loaded in the running kernel:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable tronberry
sudo systemctl restart tronberry
sudo reboot

After it comes back, verify:

sudo systemctl status tronberry

You want active (running) with an uptime that keeps climbing(not resetting every few seconds) and no "Failed to fetch" lines — at which point the panel shows your real app rotation. Tweak --led-slowdown-gpio (try 1 first, raise to 3–4 only if you see glitches). No jumper? Drop -pwm to adafruit-hat. To change flags later, edit the ExecStart line in /etc/systemd/system/tronberry.service, then sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl restart tronberry.