I made a small LED panel

116 pointsposted 12 days ago
by Brajeshwar
(stavros.io)

40 Comments

stavros

12 hours ago

I was about to comment that I also made a small LED panel, but then realized it was me.

Here's the latest LED thing I'm working on (the design isn't mine): https://immich.home.stavros.io/share/oXerU8gnLn-dNHunPOg8lM8...

Lerc

9 hours ago

Do you know if the panels can be bodged to be non square? There shouldn't be a lot of fancy wiring to screw up if it's all WS2812. Can you (delicately) chop a few LEDs out and bridge the connections?

(hoping I have seeded this idea, so I'm not the first one to attempt this)

tiku

2 hours ago

Perhaps a stupid question but why not just not use those LEDs? Shut down in the software..

ramses0

an hour ago

I mean... as a lay-person, you've got point-lights and his isolation/diffusion layers in between. If you're 3d-printing your diffusion-thingy, then you've got tons of room to play games with the shape of the final glow. Even moving light via '265μm with 64 Fiber, Optical Grade Plastic Light Guide' if you're not hitting the corners well enough.

stavros

5 hours ago

Sure, you can connect the LEDs together however you like (am I misunderstanding the question?).

Lerc

4 hours ago

Theoretically you can. It's whether it all goes pear shaped when you take a Dremel to the board to make it

    OO    OOOO   OO
    OO    OOOO   OO
    OO    OOOO   OO
    O    OOOOOO   O
    O    OOOOOO   O
    O    OOOOOO   O
        OOOOOOOO
        OOOOOOOO
And how fiddly it is to stitch up the edges. I shall find out in a couple of days when the panels arrive.

stavros

3 hours ago

Oh that's what you mean! Yes, you can, but you'd have to bridge all the data connections by hand. Much easier to just leave those LEDs off in software.

phil42

7 hours ago

How did you connect the individual smaller LED panels together? I guess the cool color patterns and the individual addressing comes from WLED then?

stavros

5 hours ago

There's a photo of the panels connected to each other, each panel has three input and three output pads, and you solder those together. The software just sees one long strip, and you configure the shape of it so it corresponds to what you have in reality.

MomsAVoxell

4 hours ago

Nice work! I've done a few LED thingies too ..

https://magicshifter.net/

.. and, I recycled some old scoreboard display panels to make something similar to your latest project, also:

About the panels: https://metalab.at/wiki/Blinkofant/LED-Display_History

The Blinkophant: https://i.imgur.com/3aPytEp.jpeg

stavros

18 minutes ago

I made something close to MagicShifter a while ago, I didn't add an accelerometer, though:

https://www.stavros.io/posts/behold-ledonardo/

I would really like to make it work with an accelerometer, as right now it's a bit fiddly to get the right speed for images, but I don't know if I can make it work.

stavros

3 hours ago

This is great! Your TLS cert is invalid, though, so the site doesn't load properly, I think.

tecleandor

2 hours ago

Where did you get the scoreboards? eBay?

BolexNOLA

12 hours ago

spidermanspointing.jpg

Jokes aside this is super cool. I always find LED panels really interesting to look at under the hood. I’m so picky about the ones I like to use almost purely based on vibes when filming. They’re just one of those things that you immediately know you’re going to love or hate in post the moment they hit your subject

foofoo12

19 minutes ago

For the diffuser, there's a nice one or two in all LED/OLED monitors. More stuff in there too, acrylic/polycarbonate glass and a Fresnel lens. Worth scavenging if you come across a broken one.

scottbez1

11 hours ago

On the topic of small LED panels, Jason of Evil Genius Labs has been making some really small LED panels [0] with addressable 1mm x 1mm LEDs (yes, individually addressable AND only 1mm on each side!). Fitting 128 onto a 1" circle is pretty sweet.

I keep meaning to design some PCBs with them [1] but it's too far down my ever-growing list of projects to see the light of day...

[0] https://www.evilgeniuslabs.org/one-inch-fibonacci128

[1] https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C5349953.html

zokier

3 hours ago

Kingbright recently released 01005 (0.45mm x 0.25mm x 0.2mm) sized LEDs, which afaik are one of the smallest ones easily available. One neat idea would be to pack those on DIP14 sized pcb, making tiny neat character display. I guess something like 5x7 or 6x8 matrix could be doable with small mcu to drive them.

For those 1mm addressable RGB LEDs I've been thinking how you could do cool cyberpunk looks by stringing them on some hairthin magnet wire and sticking them on your body/face/hair/etc. Blend them in with some latex or something if needed. Just need to hide the controller/battery somewhere.

alias_neo

6 hours ago

Ah, the joy of being a Brit. That first link is just full of purple rectangles containing the text "content not viewable in your region" (Imgur).

I'm feeling safer already. sigh.

Looks like a fun site though, I'll take a look when I'm not on my work computer.

wkat4242

4 hours ago

Those are just really small WS2812, I get those at 160 led per meter on a strip of 5 bucks per meter. I just mean to say they are cheaply available in many form factors. I use them a lot in cosplay clothing.

stavros

11 hours ago

Why are you doing this to me

masto

3 hours ago

LED matrix panels are tons of fun! I strung a bunch of them together to make a marquee across my basement soffit: https://youtu.be/W0_3rzvq9Ks?si=aTT_uOZfOYh9NLUi

I have to resist the urge to tile every surface with blinky lights. I think part of the appeal goes back to why I enjoyed writing programs on my C64 to bounce my name around the screen. It’s a limited playground, and limitations inspire creativity.

mytailorisrich

12 days ago

The diffuser really makes this. The resulting effect looks great.

stavros

12 hours ago

It really did! It looked much better than I hoped, I really liked the result.

Lerc

9 hours ago

I have a bunch of these 8x8 panels on their way from AliExpress right now for an art project that a part will look remarkably like the video. V1 will probably be a 32x32 just like it.

I still haven't decided if I want to have a partition grid between the panel and the diffuser to make square edge pixels. It's definitely going to have a rp2350 inside. PIO is the best thing ever.

Havoc

6 hours ago

Tried my hand at this too. Except more janky and was aiming at lots of output.

LED get freaking hot fast at higher wattages and quickly found myself dealing with heat sinks etc.

stavros

31 minutes ago

Do you need to run them at max brightness? I run them at 10% or so, they're really bright.

smusamashah

6 hours ago

I dont understand it. The resolution is only 8x8. How does the animation at the end looks so smooth and way higher resolution?

stavros

5 hours ago

The diffuser fakes the resolution, basically, by blending the colors together physically.

cantalopes

an hour ago

I wonder what material is diffuser made of

stavros

31 minutes ago

It's just this:

> a two-layer white square out of PLA