Introduction: Scroll a Message on a LED Matrix

By TimeSquAir & ThingBox
About: The ThingBox Project - A ready to flash Raspberry Pi image that contains Node-RED and Internet Of Things software for non developers.

If you have a shop or an office or even your home and want to display a scrolling message to tell the happy hours, the weather or any information of your choice, here is the instructable!

It uses a TimeSquAir (http://TimeSquAir.io) a all in one Raspberry Pi bundled with a LED Matrix and a NFC tag, easily customizable with a graphical UI powered by IBM's Node-RED (http://Nore-RED.org).

We'll see how to scroll a fixed message first, then a internet fetched one (the Bitcoin value).

Here is the result (video):

Step 1:

Step 2: Access the Pi From Your Browser

Enter the network address of the Pi into the address bar of your browser (see here for details).

You get IBM's Node-RED graphical interface that will allow us to customize the TimeSquAir behavior by just drag'n dropping some elements from the left palette:

Step 3: Build the LED Matrix Flow

Now you can use the provided nodes for the LEDMatrix bundled in TimeSquAir:

Step 4: Build the Message

You can link these elements (called "nodes") to build the message.

First use a LED Blank node to start. Then use a mix of LED Text and LED Picture nodes to compose the message. End with a LED Matrix node and use a Go node to activate the whole.

To display a simple text, a LED Text node is enough:

Step 5:

You can do more by mixing text and pictures:

Step 6:

Of course, some value may not be known at this time, thus should be calculated at runtime.

The solution is to use a function node and calculate the value in javascript (an easy to use software language).

Step 7: Using Calculated Values

Let it more useful and go fetch the bitcoin value on the web.

We get the value by making an HTTP request to https://paymium.com/api/v1/data/eur/ticker.

You can get mode detail here: http://thethingbox.io/docs/LEDMatrix.html.

Here is the final flow:

Step 8:

Step 9: Learn More !

Learn how to link things together with TimeSquAir (http://TimeSquAir.io) and IBM's Node-RED (http://nodered.org)

and discover the other Instructables:

Raspberry Pi Contest 2016

Participated in the
Raspberry Pi Contest 2016