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I need more dots

A project log for WifXL - GropXL

It's old, it's new, it's fun and casual, and I'm finally creating a proper project page for it !

yann-guidon-ygdesYann Guidon / YGDES 12/14/2022 at 02:000 Comments

I looked at the stock after some years of it collecting dust and I got these flip dots :

And a couple of large arrays in bad shape and hard to drive.

I have several 28×7 arrays in 15mm but they can't be tiled vertically.

Sam tried to

  1. unsolder the flip dots, and failed
  2. hack/saw the extra PCB and failed.

Ideally the dots should be around 1 inch wide, or 25mm. That's 40 dots per mètre.

In the early days of the project, I tried to make a RGB LED array using strips but

  1. it was still expensive
  2. it draws a LOT of current to make something clearly visible in all conditions
  3. consequently it dissipates a LOT of heat, requiring an aluminium backplate for extra heat conduction, and clearance in the back to let the air flow.
  4. Separator boxes must be built, with a proper optical design that diffuses the LED's spot without losing too much light/contrast
  5. It's still about as fragile as flip dots, without the noises or the null static current, and RGB strips are not ultra-reliable as well.

I don't have the budget to get modules from AlfaZeta so the last possibility would be to safely recover the 7× strips from Hanover modules, which is going to be a mess... It would require a whole box, or about 14 modules 28×7, to build a 64×42 array, supposing recovery was 95% good.

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