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LED Matrix web controller

Control a LED matrix from the web interacting with multiple users

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This project consists of a web controlled 8x8 LED matrix, allowing multiple users to interact between them. On a first run kept it running for 24h, i really enjoyed watching the users interacting with it, lot's of people drawing all kind of stuff from pixel art to animated snake games, to users playing rounds of Tic Tac Toe between them.

This is a 2013 project and the following instructions are the same as the one available on my website. But as i just found this wonderful platform it was as a means to test the project creation, hope many more will come :)

Here is a quick demo

  • 1 × 30~ Kohm resistor
  • 1 × A bunch of prototyping wires
  • 1 × 8x8 Led Matrix BL-M12A881UR-11
  • 1 × Digit Display Driver MAX7219CNG
  • 1 × Arduino

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  • 1
    Step 1

    Wiring


    The tricky part was to figure out which pins were the cathodes and anodes from the Led Matrix, once i figured that out having the datasheet and this tutorial as reference it's pretty straight forward, the cathodes connect to the DIG (rows) pins and the anodes to the SEG (columns) pins. I made the following representation for reference

  • 2
    Step 2

    Software


    Once you confirm you have control over the matrix ( ahahah how does that sound? ) start setting up your machine, first install node.js and test it. Then get the source code from github, navigate to app folder and install the package dependencies using npm.

    It will download the packages serial-port, socket.io and forever, the last one is quite optional but i recommend to use it if you want to keep the node.js instance running even if it unexpectedly quits, in fact it does that for any kind of script you want to run.

    Do not forget to forward your router ip port ( default: 8124 ) if you wan't the instance to be available outside your network. When ready upload sketch to arduino found in the arduino folder, connect it to your computer running node and start the node server.js

  • 3
    Step 3

    Stream

    For users to be able to see the LED matrix in realtime you need a regular webcam to stream it, i used the service http://bambuser.com/ using a very low resolution in order to have the less lag possible ( lag will always happen ), i managed to get the best results using Flash Media Live Encoder.

    Hope you enjoy, happy drawings :)

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