A Marquee, News Feed Ticker, Twitter, WiFi Repeater Bridge, Thing.

This project started when I was going through the junk in my garage, stumbiling across this old LED sign and a spare wireless router. Now, it gives me all kinds of info from the local weather, date/time, various news feeds, interesting tweets, etc. Basically, any info available from the web. Also, I have modified the WiFi router to be a repeater bridge. So, in one way, I can consider this something interesting to do with a WiFi repeater.

I would not try making another one exactly like this because the parts are so unique. But, I will re-use some of these techiques to do similar things with (I actually already have).

Step 1: The Basic Construction

Components:
  - LED Display
  - An SBC (I used this because I had one)
  - A WiFi router (I used this from my garage)
  - A display case/shadow box (example)
  - A piece of two-way mirror (example)
  - Some black felt to hide everything

The first thing I did was to get the SBC working with the LED display. You're basically on your own here. Of course, you could use any type of SBC/Display combo here. It just needs to emit light and connect to the web.

After all the basic components were working, I cut a piece of the two-way mirror to fit the display case and replaced its original glass with it. With the display off, the mirror gives it a nice effect.

Step 2: Under the Hood

Next, I took the router and power supplies out of their native enclosures and mounted everything to the backboard of the display case. Here, I used hot glue and JB weld to stick the things down. I connected everything together and shortened cables where needed.

Then I glued felt under the display to hide the components.

Step 3: The Back

I mounted power switches, the AC plug, and an Ethernet connector to the back of the unit. These were primarily done with JB weld and some random hardware.

Step 4: Finishing

I put a couple of small holes in the felt to be able to see some status indications through the mirror.

I also replaced the firmware in the router with dd-wrt. That is how I made it a WiFi repeater bridge. Check it out if you have an old router lying around. It will allow you to do some really cool things with it.