Introduction: 64x16 RED LED Marquee

About: We're a pre-engineering academy in Tustin High School, a public high school in Orange County, CA

The purpose of this small scale LED marquee is to display messages to our classroom in a more modern and centralized way. In the classroom, this construction would save white board space and is convenient because it can store a large amount of information. It is also fairly simple to program and has a mount, making it easy to place anywhere within the classroom setting.

Step 1: Materials

The first step of this project is to gather all the materials necessary to assemble your miniature marquee.

  • 1 64x16 LED matrix that can be ordered here.
  • Access to a 3D modeling computer program such as SolidWorks in which you will be able to create the mount for the Marquee and the containment box for the arduino processor
  • 1 Arduino UNO processor and Arduino coding software
  • 1 9v battery
  • 9 male-female pin cables

Step 2: Construct Your Marquee Mount

Using your 3D software (we used SolidWorks), design a mount and Arduino processor containment box.

We have provided our own measurements and STL files for both the mount and the containment box, but feel free to make your own adjustments.

Print out your designs.

Step 3: Schematic/Pin Assignments

The next thing you need to do is wire the electronic marquee to the Arduino. The pin assignments are as follows (as well as included in the code):

LT=8;

SK=12;

R1=10;

R2=11;

EN=2;

LA=3;

LB=4;

LC=5;

LD=6;

GND=GND

Note: we had to toy with this quite a bit in order to get the correct fit for our marquee. If you purchase a different LED panel, you may need to alter the pin assignments to meet your own needs.

Step 4: Program Your Marquee and Add Power

Attached is the arduino code that we used for our marquee.

Adjust our provided code to your purpose and upload your message into your arduino.

Using a battery power adapter, connect your arduino processor to your nine volt battery to power up your marquee!

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