This attractive LED matrix show will wow you

If you happen to solely care about exhibiting content material as clearly as doable on the lowest value, you then’ll wish to flip to LCD or OLED know-how. However a mission’s show offers you a chance to get artistic with the aesthetic, which opens up an entire world of various show sorts. If you’d like a retro really feel, then you’ll be able to inspiration in DIY GUY Chris’ attractive LED matrix.

It is a dot-matrix LED show with an total decision of 32×8. However that description alone doesn’t do the mission justice. Chris used tiny 0603 SMD LEDs, which allowed for very excessive “pixel” density and that leads to higher readability than a typical LED matrix show. To allow future growth, Chris set this up as a bunch board that accepts 4 LED boards — every of which incorporates an 8×8 matrix. A MAX7219 IC drives the LEDs on every of these boards.

The LED boards hook up with the host board by means of nifty mezzanine connectors. The host board incorporates an Arduino Nano that sends management alerts to the MAX7219 chips. The Arduino can provide USB energy to the LEDs, however there may be additionally a DC jack for energy when USB isn’t related. Chris’ Arduino sketch lets the consumer “print” alphanumeric characters to scroll throughout the 4 LED matrices.

The very best half about this design (aside from the nice fashion) is that Chris can scale it up sooner or later with bigger host boards that settle for greater than 4 LED boards.