This Led Matrix Uses 74HC595 Shift Register & CD4017 Decade Counter , Its Very Simpe To Make This Project If You Follow My Steps Given Below I Have Simplified The Steps And Explained Everything For Better Understanding .

Done With The Talking Now Now Lets Get The Show Going 😬✌️🔧

Step 1: Setting Up the HARDWARE !!

These Are All The Required Parts For This Project

You Can Buy From Here Tomson Electronics

ARDUINO NANO

74HC595 SHIFT REGISTER

CD4017 IC DEECADE COUNTER

2N3904 OR 2N2222 TRANSISTOR

220 OHM RESISTOR

5MM LED

MALE HEADER

FEMALE HEADER

GENERAL PURPOSE DOT PCB

Step 2: Setting the Work ..

Score And Snap The Dotted Pcb In Which Size You Need To Make Your Led Matrix. Use A Pointed Pen Knife Or Similar Thing To Make The Cut , Then Bend The Board To Break At The Cut ... Its Simple 😀
Once You Have Done That Step Make Sure To Have 144 LEDs With You , You Can Select The Colour According To Your Imagination , Great Mind ....

Iam Using Green Colour LEDs With Me Sort Of , To Test The Led Use A 220ohm Resistor Series With The Positive Terminal & The Voltage Potential , If You Are Using A Higher Voltage Than 3 volts . Or You Can Use CR2302 Button Cell For This Job It Will Provide Enough Power To Light The Led For Testing Make Sure You Have Tested All The LEDs Before Soldering To Avoid Malfunctioning Of The LEDs ..

If You Have Much More Time Then You Can Diffuse The LEDs By Using A 1500 Grid Sandpaper So That It Would Be More Attractive . Its All Up To You Folks .. Place The Led The Dot Board So That The Cathode And Anode Form. A Parallel line Make Sure To Place The Anode At The Top Side Of The Dot Board . Once It's Done Bend The Leads Of The Led To Short All The Anodes All Together Or You Can Use A Silver Copper Wire For This Job .

Cut The Excesses Leads After Shorting The Pins For Soldering Now We Have The Cathode Facing Up Use A 3mm Steel Rod Or A Pencil To Bend The Leads With Out Touching The Anode Pins Of The Led . Then Cut The Excesses Lead And Solder Them At The Points . Now We Have Completed Around 25% Of Our Led Matrix Its Always A Good Thing To Test Everything After Soldering Now You Have Apply Negative Charge To Led Anode Row And Positive Charge To Led Chathode To Light Up The Led .

Since The LEDs Are In A Matrix If You Need To Light Up The Led In The First Row And The Led In The 3rd Column The Apply Charge To Negative Charge To Anode Row Of The First Row And The Cathode Pin In The 3rd Column . In That Way Test All The LEDs, To Complete The Build Of The Matrix......

Step 3: Attaching Wires to the Matrix ..

After Fixing The LEDs To The Matrix To Attach Them To The Controller Board We Need To Wire Them , For That Iam Using Ribbion Wire We Have 24 LEDs in The Column And 6 LEDs In The Row Section, So In Total 6×24 Led Matrix Then Fix The Ribbion Wire So That We Could Get 3 Pair Of Wires From The Column Section In The Multiple Of 8 So In Total 8 by 3 equals 24

This is How We Sort The Wires For The Column Of The Led Matrix . Then For The Column Section We Need To Have Only Six Wires The Row LEDs Are Driven By A Decade Counter , It Can Drive LEDs With 6 pins So It's Easy To Make The Led Matrix .

For Better Results Strip The Wire Short To Make Connections With The Dot Board Then Tin The Wires Before Soldering Use A High Grade Flux From Solderon Or Any Other Brand . Make Sure To Fix The Wires Properly Make A Note On The Colour We Have Started Soldering For All the First Column Since We Have 8 Wires For A Column .

For My Ease And I Was Having A Long Strip Of Ribbion Wire Lying Around Without No Use , Inorder To Not Waste Them I Used all Of Them For The Project , You Can Use Any Other Kind Of Wire For This Purpose Make Sure To Use Different Colured Wire So That To Avoid Confusion Later ,

When We Are Connecting Them With The Led Driver Board . make Sure To Connect Male Or Female Header At The End Of The Wires Of The Led Matrix For Connecting Them To The Driver Board , Iam Using Female Header For That ....

Step 4: Making the Controller Board .

Add The Gerber File From The Description To The jlcpcb.com To Manufacture The Controller Board . There Is So Many Ways To Get It Coustomised Form The Jlcpcb Website You Can Change The Colour , The Thickness , If You Don't Need Any Coustom Needs Then Set Everything As Default

After That Click On Save To Cart And Checkout The Pcb , Since I Have Used The Normal Delivery To Get The PCBs Through China Post It Took Around 2 Weeks To Arrive , By This Method We Have 2 Advantages First One Is We Can Reduce The Shipping Cost , The Second One Is We Can Avoid The Coustoms Duty Clerance , And For All These Things We Need To Wait For Like 2 Weeks Approximately The We Will Get The Fruit Of Our Hard Work

The PCBs Are Well Arranged And Packed Sometimes We Can Get Some Gifts From Jlcpcb When We Are Ordering The PCBs

Then Gather All the Parts Like ICs , Resistors , Headers , Transistors And Solder Them One by One To Complete The Board

Have Some Coffee For Your Hardwork 😬 Take A Break .......

Step 5: Wiring Up All Together

For Saving Space For This Project Iam Using Arduino Nano But You Can Use Any Type Of Arduino Flavour Arduino UNO , MEGA , PROMINI , NANO Everything Just Work Fine Flawlessly But Using Other Arduino Flavours Than Arduino NANO Might Be An Overkill And Will Worth Some Grands For You , As far As My Concern Iam Using The Nano

We Only Need 5 Digital Pins Of The Arduino For This Project But You Are Free To Use Any Other Digital Pins Of The Arduino

Try To Fix The Wires To Controlled Board By The Numbering In The PCB With The Led Matrix , Connecting Them To Row & Column Of The Controller Board

And Need To Change It In Arduino Code Instead, All The Links To Softwares Gerber file And All Other Things Mentioned Will Be Provided In The End Of The Instructable 😀✌️

Step 6: Uploading Arduino Code & Testing

Open The Arduino Code , Here We Can Display Coustom Characters , Letters, Numbers & Everything You Can Think Of Moving Further , Scroll Down The Code Untill You Find "PUT YOUR TEXT HERE" In The Code Then Type What You Need To Display In The Led Matrix Here . But Remeber One Thing -- Type Letter B Before Ever Word For Example For Displaying The Word ZENOMODIFF We Need To Type Like -- BZ,BE,BN,BO,BSPACE,BM,BO,BD,BI,BF,BF The Letters Bytes Are Previously Stored In A Array , And Now We Are Just Printing It One After The Other ,

All the Letters Path Is Converted To Binary For Arduino To Calculated Where To Turn On And Off The Lights Like For Instinct 0,1 The Letter 1 Represents the Light To Be ON & The Letter 0 Represents Light To Be OFF

This Is How Letters Are Printed On The Led Matrix