Web Enabled Led Matrix

Details

The Idea:
An LED Matrix that can serve many different functions in the IoT world

For example:

Multiplayer Gaming device
-similar to an arcade (1, 2 oder more players can connect and play via their smartphone)

Live Messaging Notifier
-Notifies you when you receive an email or any other messenger
-Display Youtube Subscriptions or Facebook likes
-(All yould be done by using IFTTT)

Weather Station
-Display current Weather and Time on the screen

Educational
-Visualize different algorithms and data structures on the screen
-Create Interactive exhibits for museums

Easily Programable LED Sign
-store owners can Display any text they want
-update the stores opening times and or display messages to customers from anywhere in the world
-all can be done from anywhere in the world with an internet enabled device with a browser

Components

1 × NodeMCU v3 Esp8266

1 × 10m WS2812b LED-Strips

1 × Various Woods

1 × Plexiglas 1000x500mm

1 × 3m Wire (ca 1mm diameter)

Project Logs

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The Code
caBattista • 06/10/2017 at 09:45 • 0 comments

It turned out to be the bulk of the work as we had to use javascript for the website and I had never coded in js before luckily there is W3Schools wich taught me everything I needed to know.
More to come...
Time for the firs tests.
caBattista • 06/10/2017 at 09:44 • 0 comments

The firs scetces I did were simple one liner color set methods.
I tried diferent colors and brightnesses to see how bright it would be with just the usb power.
In theory each led uses 100mA, I have 200 leds wich equates to 30A! of power usage. So I will ad a bigger power supply later.
Old Pc power supplies are great for this application as they can proivide up to about 40A on the 5V rail.
The Matrix
caBattista • 06/10/2017 at 09:43 • 0 comments

The matrix was build in my basement on a home built table saw made form a wooden board and a circular saw. I bought two large pieces of lumber to be cut in thin strips and frame as it would been very expensive to buy the thin strips separately. They are about 900x30x3mm and have a 3mm slot where the other gird piece slides in.
The the Led strips arrived from aliexpress they where about 40€ for 10m (30 leds per 1m).
I tested them out by using a test sketch to turn orn different colors. And they seem to work beautifully.
So now I could cut them into 80cm strips which works out to exactly 12. The grid will be 12x25 pixels.
The adhiesive seemed to be strong enough to keep the strips comming of of the particle board. But I'm not to worried about them comming of because in addition the grid will be keeping them in place.
Now the ends had to be soldered together, which was a bit tidious but it got done in a half an hour.
I made sure that + was conected to + and - to - and the data out of one strip to the data in of the next strip in a "snake" configuration, which saves wires and time it can be compensated for in the code later.
After a lot of fiddeling the grid was complete. A nice thing is that it holds together just by friction cause by my inaccurate work :) But some pieces got chipped of by the saw, which i glued paper over so stop the light from bleed into the other cells.
It can be lifted out of the frame esasily if repairs are neccessary.
For a nice touch i rounded of the side pieces with a router and a round bit, but before that holes had to be drilled to srew the frame together. No glue is use in the intire build which makes it easy to dissasemble.
MAKE MUNICH
caBattista • 05/11/2017 at 07:10 • 0 comments

We went to Make Munich with our university. (http://make-munich.de/) It is like the Maker Faires in the US and It was lots of fun to talk with people about micro controllers and other IoT related topics. We got a lot of feedback on how to improve the Matrix and as well as many new use cases for it.