Designing and building the display:
About the Bluetooth data transfer:
Display PCBs:
Two PCBs (left half 8 x 10, right half 8 x 10) designed in KiCad (see files) and Milled into PCB material using my CNC milling machine. Standard green LEDs. The distance between two LEDs is 9mm.
Multiplex-configuration: All (+) per row connected and all (-) per column. The (-) are driven by Darlington-drivers, the (+) by PNP transistors.
Control-board:
PCB (see files) created in KiCad and milled.
Rows: Individual PNP transistors, one data-line to the arduino per row.
Columns: Two daisy-chained SerToPar Shift-registers control two darlington arrays.
BT-module:
Cheap BT speaker, the class-D amp got disconnected from the DAC and the signal is fed into an analog port of the arduino.
Clock: PCB from a Cheap wall clock, the coil-signal drives a transistor which pulls down a digital port of the arduino every two seconds.
Nice work!
Not sure if it will speed up transmission, as you mention some DAC problems with the BT speaker module, but maybe you can give WebJack a try: http://webjack.io/examples/