Perchi Matrix vs AWTRIX: flash a Ulanzi yourself, or keep the AWTRIX 3 API with a product behind it

AWTRIX 3 is the free community firmware for the Ulanzi TC001, AWTRIX 2 mainboards and DIY 32x8 ESP32 matrices: custom apps pushed over MQTT or HTTP without recompiling, Home Assistant discovery, an online flasher, animated icons and no cloud dependency. Its GitHub repository (2.4k stars, 232 forks) now says it is no longer maintained, archived, with no new releases or issue support, and points to its successor.

AWTRIX NG is that successor, rewritten from scratch for ESP32 and ESP32-S3 with WS2812 panels 8 pixels high and 32 to 128 wide. It adds on-device Berry scripting edited in the browser, a web UI, five built-in apps and MQTT discovery. Its migration guide is blunt: API paths, MQTT topics and payload keys all changed, a key AWTRIX NG does not know is no longer ignored and the whole payload is rejected, so every AWTRIX 3 integration must be reworked. Its licence is PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0, free for noncommercial use and off limits to commercial vendors without an agreement. Its HTTP reference says Basic auth is available but the shipping default is no auth at all, and updates are a manual .bin upload.

Perchi Matrix (₹4,499 including GST) runs Perchi OS, our own firmware, on an ESP32-S3 with 8x8 WS2812B panels. It is not a fork of AWTRIX. It ships with 70+ apps, a no-code builder, a REST API, webhooks, an MCP server and an SDK and CLI, and it implements an authenticated subset of the AWTRIX 3 local API and MQTT topics so that existing AWTRIX 3 flows keep working with a product and a warranty behind them. Updates are signed and roll back automatically. See Developers and what an AWTRIX-compatible display is.

Perchi Matrix answers the AWTRIX 3 endpoints that automations actually use: stats, settings (brightness, auto-transition, transition speed, app time, text colour, uppercase, time and date formats), custom apps by name, notify and dismiss, the app list, switch, next and previous app, three indicators and power, plus native endpoints for capabilities and scenes. It accepts the AWTRIX 3 keys for text with coloured parts, icons by id or base64, progress bars, bar and line charts, drawing commands, lifetime, hold, effects and overlays. The screenshot endpoint is not supported; the dashboard's live mirror replaces it. Over MQTT it uses the same topic layout with Home Assistant discovery, in bearer mode.

Two honest limits. The AWTRIX 3 geometry is 32x8, so on the 24x8 launch size a custom app is cropped and the 32x8 Perchi Matrix is the size where AWTRIX flows need no scaling. And Perchi Matrix does not implement the AWTRIX NG API v1, so an NG-era flow will not talk to it.

AWTRIX NG ships with no authentication on its HTTP API by default and updates by manual .bin upload, which is fine on a trusted LAN and a chore across a fleet. Perchi Matrix keeps the local API off until an owner enables it, then requires a token (bearer or Basic) or HMAC-signed requests, allowlists the Host header against DNS rebinding, refuses cross-origin requests and rate-limits to 30 requests a second. Firmware updates are signed with a key that never sits on a server, trial-booted on an A/B partition, rolled back automatically on failure and rolled out in stages; Security has the full chain.

This is where AWTRIX wins. A 5,000-member Discord, the AWTRIX Hub of flows and icons, years of Home Assistant blueprints and on-device Berry scripting in NG make it the most flexible thing you can put on a TC001, and it costs nothing. Perchi Matrix offers a no-code builder, a REST API, webhooks and an MCP server instead of on-device scripting, and its community is new. If tinkering is the hobby, AWTRIX is the better hobby.