I’ve set out designing what I’d like to call Arduquee, a Arduino powered Marquee. The idea is this, low cost LED matrix driver boards that are easy to work with at (hopefully) around $10 a board including the LED matrix itself. A similar serial driven LED matrix can go for $35 per 8×8 matrix. That can add up fast if you want to chain more then one together for a large display. Instead, my design is 1/3 the price, and can easily be chained together to create larger displays.
The pictures in the post show version 1 with a red/green LED matrix. My goal was to have a single PCB design that can act as a ’slave’ or as the ‘master’. The master is the board with an Atmega 328 that drives all the boards in the chain. The master also has a 5V 2A voltage regulator circuit to power the entire chain.
As you can see in the pictures, I have version 1 running with an Arduino Duemilanove standing in as the master. I’ve started redesigning for version 2, and I think I’m going to stray away from a single design PCB, so that the board size can shrink to fit it all behind the LED matrix. But this may drive up the price point. My plans are to open source that hardware design when I’m done, and maybe even selling kits to build your own.
I’d like community input for what you would like to see in a product like this, and if the price point is right. Please feel free to leave comments.
UPDATE!!!
Got more boards put together, ran into some major noise issues on my power rail. Had to add capacitors to every slave board to quiet the noise down. Added video of it's first (legible) words. Took a few tries to get it right. Still debating making this into a kit. Would anyone be interested?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMQyje3y1hg
Really NICE project!