If you happen to solely care about displaying content material as clearly as potential on the lowest value, then you definitely’ll wish to flip to LCD or OLED know-how. However a challenge’s show provides you a chance to get inventive with the aesthetic, which opens up a complete world of various show sorts. If you need a retro really feel, then you’ll be able to inspiration in DIY GUY Chris’ attractive LED matrix.

This can be a dot-matrix LED show with an general decision of 32×8. However that description alone doesn’t do the challenge justice. Chris used tiny 0603 SMD LEDs, which allowed for very excessive “pixel” density and that ends in higher readability than a typical LED matrix show. To allow future enlargement, Chris set this up as a number board that accepts 4 LED boards — every of which accommodates an 8×8 matrix. A MAX7219 IC drives the LEDs on every of these boards.

The LED boards connect with the host board by nifty mezzanine connectors. The host board accommodates an Arduino Nano that sends management alerts to the MAX7219 chips. The Arduino can provide USB energy to the LEDs, however there’s additionally a DC jack for energy when USB isn’t linked. Chris’ Arduino sketch lets the consumer “print” alphanumeric characters to scroll throughout the 4 LED matrices.

The most effective half about this design (apart from the nice model) is that Chris can scale it up sooner or later with bigger host boards that settle for greater than 4 LED boards.