When it is running, this build turns two 64×64 HUB75 panels into a busy little underwater world. Fish swim past, jellyfish drift through, bubbles rise, and a submarine can be called up on demand. There are plants, a treasure chest, and an oyster holding a glowing pearl, plus day and night palettes and scheduled feeding animations. It works as a purely decorative animated display, and the whole scene plays out on a matrix panel set on a wooden television stand shelf.
The hardware side is kept simple: a Pico 2W based Pimoroni Interstate 75 W board drives the two panels. Everything runs locally with no WiFi, accounts or internet connection needed. The A/B buttons on the board handle the features, letting the maker summon the submarine, switch between day and night, and set the clock. While the clock is being adjusted, the time shows on screen.
What stands out is how approachable the release is. The offline version is on GitHub under the MIT license, with installation instructions and a desktop preview included. There is even a desktop emulator so anyone can try the aquarium without owning the hardware; it needs Python 3 with Tkinter and Pillow, and starts by running emulator.py from the extracted folder. Emulator keys cover pausing, toggling day and night, automatic mode, summoning the submarine, feeding and quitting.
One thing still open is that physical board testing remains on the checklist. There is also a sensible trade-off worth noting: the maker does not run the displays at full brightness or at 60fps, and reports that the setup runs fine on a 5 V 1.8 A phone power brick, even though the panels state they want 4 amps at 5 volts each. The home version does use WiFi credentials and the UK country setting for the clock, while the released version avoids that entirely.