Custom LED screen

Hi people,

Hoping to find out whether this is possible or not. I'm looking to build an LED custom monitor - large scale- that could output directly from a PC - say running a flash animation or something. If you want to get an idea of the kind of thing I'm interested in then Jim Campbell is in the right ball park:

go to Jim Campbell's site

I'm basic looking for advice on materials (possibly costs) and a shopping list of "things I'll need to learn". Any advice much appreciated.

Julie

Comments

[angel12]

Please define more preisely!!!!!!!!!!!<br/><span class="underline"></span><span class="underline"></span><span class="underline"></span><span class="underline"></span><span class="underline"></span><span class="underline"></span><span class="underline"></span><span class="underline"></span><span class="underline"></span><span class="underline">_</span><br/>Angel<br/>Did you see it? One more time? You won't get faked out here!<br/><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.SelectWealthSystem.com/?t=wc">http://www.SelectWealthSystem.com/?t=wc</a><br/>

[ikarias]

mmmm. I agree that we do need a forum for this. But now that were on the topic, why not? If you want any reasonable quality, youll need 340 /400 pixels. Thats a 1m60 wide screen. So i think you better be off using SMD leds.

[ernestled]

Personally speaking,there are two kinds of SMD method as SMD 3-in-1 and SMD 3-in line. The conformity of SMD 3-in-1 is better than 3-in line. By the way, it seems it's LED TV, what's the pixel pitch of your planned indoor screen?

[Moogle]

If you want a screen you can do something on, more is better, but for specialized uses, as low as 240 or 160 isn't too bad.

If you want a piece of art, you might accept as low as 32x32.

There are LCD driver boards that can act as very low res display devices, so it should be possible to have an arbitrarily small video out.

As far as cost...
Multicolor RGB LEDs - $0.10 each (I don't really believe this price, it's unrealistically low. I'm having trouble finding plain red LEDs for less that $0.07 each, most other rgb sources are over $1 per!!!)
http://cgi.ebay.com/50-PC-5mm-8Kmcd-Manual-Control-MultiColor-RGB-LED-F-R_W0QQitemZ320032006042QQihZ011QQcategoryZ26207QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

32x32= 1024 == $103
160x160= 25600 = $256
240x240= 57600 = $576
640x480= 307200 = $3072

Basically, doing it yourself is going to get insanely expensive. I don't even know how you'd drive them, especially how you'd flash them to change the apparent brightness. I have a feeling the control circuitry will cause the price to spiral even further out of control.

Companies do make LED displays that come in sections that wire together to form large screens. I think they mostly rent them out to huge companies for conventions (I saw several kinds at E3), because they probably cost excessive amounts per section, and few people need a huge display for long periods of time.

[ian]

Indeed, the RGB, or even singles (R, G, Bs) are always more expensive than I expect. Good prices can be had, direct from china, in quantity. Still, a single color wall would be cool. You could display a shadow of the viewer (low res mirror) with a webcam. To dim the LEDs use PWM. The most direct way to PWM lots of LEDs is the Ti9572 (???). It will do 16 LEDs, simple serial interface, cascadable. There is an example at si-light.sourceforge.net. Thats gonna be a lot of controllers though, and speed quickly becomes an issue. How did the MIT kids do the dance floor?

[skautistic]

What you suggested is not far beyond the realm of imagination or knowledge. If "julliecat" were able to complete the project using your help. It would have already been done. I believe what the author wanted was a complete instructable not a jumping-off point.

[VIRON]

You can fake this project most easily with a VGA projector and a truckload of Lite-Brites.

[Jack Daniels]

you get an F sir flaged

[mrmath]

JULIECAT! JULIECAT! My wife uses the screen JulieCat. I'm just shocked to see someone else using it!

[Camster911]

Ok, yes, i opened this webpage all exited, but chill out people, he needs help, where else is he to post it? a forum is the better option.

[Crash2108]

This is why we need a forum here.

[skautistic]

Forum? I think in the military this is called "contracting" I agree with Liganic, we have a need for moderators.

[Liganic]

This is why we need a user poll to delete "instructables", if you can call this one. Or at least good moderators.