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DIY LED Array Marquee For Your PC
An anonymous reader writes "Ever wish you had one of those big LED displays to keep you up to date on e-mails, stock quotes, server uptimes, or weather? Here's a new video tutorial showing how to build your own computer-controlled LED array. You can code your own data feed, and just send it over a TCP socket. This looks like a fun weekend project for someone looking to get started with electronics by building something useful."
The question is if I can do this and have it run from my car. I put in predefined phrases, and depending on which switch I hit or button, it says them?
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
can we get it to synch to Trans-siberian Orchestra's Wizards in Winter?
No.
What will really help this technology take off is if it's able to convert your porn into an LED display. Stick figure porn FTW!
Monstar L
yeah but then you'd have self esteem issues because every stick of the stick figure would be the same size...
I can't say I ever wanted that. Ever.
I know LEDs are all the big rage now for displays. You see the seven-segment LED displays on calculators. But, while watching TV a year ago, I had an idea... what if I were to somehow connect up a TV to my computer? It took me a couple months, but I finally got it working... yes, a TV screen (well, actually it's not a TV anymore since I had to take out the receiver guts) connected to a computer. Since I use it to MONITOR the status of the various programs running on the computer, I'm going to call this contraption a "Monitor"
I'll make millions!
Also...I was out in my garage the other day cleaning and I found a dead mouse in the corner...and again, my mind is always working... I though...what would happen if I plugged this little guy's tail into the back of my computer, and replaced his legs with little motion-sensing wheels? I'll let you alll know the results when I finish my new invention. I'm calling it the Mobile Organic Universal Sensor Emulator, or MOUSE for short.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Hes dead Jim. Anyone have a mirror?
You fail at being a nerd.
But without seeing the article it's fairly safe to assume this involves a microcontroller. I'm guessing an AVR -that's what I'd use, and people have been able to put together TCP interfaces on 'em.
Considering that, I doubt I'd consider this as a good project to 'get started' with electronics. Or microcontrollers even.. AVR's STK500 'starter kit' is a rather nice, if a bit pricey. (I've heard the Basic Stamp system is beginner-oriented. I have no experience with them though)
It's still sounds like a fun kit though.
I remember when I first realized that you could double your row-column population. Then I extrapolated it to its logical conclusion... that you could connect n(n-1) leds where n is the number of control lines. I was so proud! Then in an unrelated search I learned that not only was this an established technique, but it even had a cute name: Charlieplexing.
There's a neat little story here:
http://www.maxim-ic.com/appnotes.cfm/an_pk/1880
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
They have a lot more LEDs than controller outputs and use tricks to multiplex. But this means each LED only is turned on for a few milliseconds at a time. Can you get out a reasonable intensity this way?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
My boss gave me a USB-powered LED screen as a Christmas present, aimed as one of those endless throwaway novelty USB gadgets (other one was a whack-a-mole game. It's far smaller than the one in TFA though, about the size of a pack of smokes. Still, it scrolls text and displays bitmaps pretty niftily. The font and configuration files are stored in plain text (the scroll speed was a fun one to tweak) so the option for even-triggered (e.g. server in trouble) scripting is there.
Granted, there's no geek cred from building it yourself, but at least the soft aspect is similar. Now if only there support calls would stop coming in so fast that I had time to play with the thing...
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Pinball games uses the same row-column setup to drive lights and read switches.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwP3EVPzrkk
Hi all,
We had tuned the www.NerdKits.com site to survive slashdottings with its old PHP backend, but we recently started experimenting with some Django. Django is great as a programming framework, but I suppose we have discovered that our tuning of the server settings isn't quite up to handling a Slashdotting! We've temporarily disabled that stuff so the site is back and running. My apologies for the downtime.
- The NerdKits Team
Put this at the beginning after s is assigned, to reduce the time you have to wait between restarts for old connections to go away.
s.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
I wrote the firmware for one of these thingies about 20 years ago. (I did it for a company that was in the electronic sign business - they made those flip-dot signs you see on buses, subways, etc.) I was lucky to have been given pretty-much complete flexibility in the firmware design, including functionality.
We used a Z-80 as the controller. The display panel was built on two identical circuit boards - they could be chained endlessly, though I don't think they ever made a wider model. It was a BIG DEAL getting the component-stuffing machine to place all those LEDs! (This wasn't surface mount, but through-holes.)
Each display panel had a shift-register - one bit per column, and just passed the bits down to the next panel. The CPU banged out bits to the shift register until the row was filled, and then enabled the row driver. Yes, we were careful to avoid refresh rates that could be a problem for epileptics.
They insisted on an asymmetrical case design - the case had a "base" that it could sit on on a desk or other surface, or it could be mounted from a ceiling. Only problem was, if it was mounted from a ceiling, it was then "upside down" and the characters had to be flipped. They were going to put a switch on the back, but I figured they would get support calls from people who wouldn't read the manual, so at my suggestion they put in a mercury switch, mounted at a 45 degree angle. The processor read the mercury switch and flipped the characters if needed.
We used an RCA flat-panel keyboard with a custom overlay. I designed icons for the various effects, and the icons were printed over letters and accessed during programming with the "ALT" key. The icons appeared on screen when in programming mode. There was a simple text-editor, and some icons accepted parameters (for example, transition effects all took an optional transition time parameter) I implemented a simple macro system [macro_name] so that text snippets could be stored and referenced from within messages. You could store multiple messages and select the one or ones to be displayed, or a timer could trigger them.
There was also a serial port through which it could be programmed. I think the idea was that it could be programmed remotely in, say, a store location. I don't know if this was ever implemented, but I vaguely recall that the idea was to send a subcarrier signal on a muzak station (that stores would already have access to) that would be decoded and passed to the serial port.
I never did install one of these in the back window of my car. I certainly entertained the thought, though. :)
I had one of the pre-production samples kicking around for years, and finally discarded it. Yea, I wish I still had that Schelbi Mark 8 too... (Mine was build on a wirewrap board - somebody was selling a kit with a wirewrap board and all the parts).
(Would be interesting to compare the designs. However, the site referenced by the article has been slashdotted...)
How to turn an old Tivo into a webserver that can withstand a slashdotting!
1. buy lots of server bandwidth and hardware 2. have a buddy post a product link 3. have other buddies talk it up
I already have LED Marquees all over my office. I just used this HP Printer hack to make them say whatever I want. I setup a rotating schedule so that every 10 minutes it would change the display. It still uses a TCP socket much like this one.
I think it would be cool to juggle in front GIANT LED marquees.
I can have a wall of these LEDs randomly blinking, then my computer room looks like some "secret headquarters" with big monoliths of useless lights, just like in science fiction films of yesteryear. Now only if I could get that sound loop of the "computer beeping" stock audio it would be complete. Maybe a tractor feed printer on a stand, aww yeah.
You can get scrolling marquee licence plate holders. This is just the first link I found, I have seen them cheaper at places like Canadian Tire (which will probably confuse 98 per cent of readers here). But they do exist.
Still, making my own would be fun, I could put it up on the wall of my cubicle and do Facebook-style status updates with it. "Jabbrwokk is picking his nose and flicking it at the back of Jeff's head."
Shame the TCP/IP stack isn't on the microcontroller. Putting uIP on there, or grabbing bits from my stack (http://www.mcternan.co.uk/MAD/) would be awesome.
-- Mike
What will really help this technology take off is if it's able to convert your porn into an LED display. Stick figure porn FTW!
With mplayer you already can play movies on a LED display, just upgrade the microcontroller, make a 80x24 LED display, and use one of the appropriate video output drivers:
mplayer -vo aa movie.avi | netcat localhost 6666
mplayer -vo caca movie.avi | netcat localhost 6666
mplayer -vo bl movie.avi | netcat localhost 6666
aa - ASCII art video output driver that works on a text console. You can get a list and an explanation of available suboptions executing mplayer -vo aa:help
caca - Color ASCII art video output driver that works on a text console.
bl - Video playback using the Blinkenlights UDP protocol. This driver is highly hardware specific.
For more details check the mplayer man page.
"Ever wish you had one of those big LED displays to keep you up to date on e-mails, stock quotes, server uptimes, or weather?
Yeah, I used to wish exactly that, but I took the easy (well, I did have to reverse-engineer the serial protocol, but that was fairly easy) way out and went to the hardware store and bought one. It's been serving my team very well since then. :-)
You fail at being a nerd.
In that case I'm proud to fail
I suppose it has a nostalgic "cool factor" as far as building it from scratch and all, but in terms of money spent and the practicality of the end result, why not just use existing technology? Such as those fancy multi-row mini-LCD displays and hook it up to lcdproc? I did, and I love it. Crystalfontz 20x4 blue-backlit display with network, temps, weather, slashdot... whatever I want.
I got creative with our HP printers a few years ago, trying to see what it would take to get some of our programming team to speak up, or to say anything without being explicitly told what to say. You know the type, I'm sure...
The first person to notice INSERT COIN was my former boss, who spluttered and then demanded an explanation of our sysadmin. Sysadmin claimed total ignorance, but admitted it might be a good idea. I heard this going on and after I regained my composure went in to his office and spilled the beans. And gave him a copy of the perl script. :-)
One of our summer students was terribly confused at first, because he couldn't figure out where to put money in, or how much.
The same printer now says SIT VIS TECUM.
...laura
from 10 16x16x(red, green) modules. Problematic was the (theoretical) current required to drive the whole assemblage: 512 * 10 * 20mA = 102 Ampere, at 5 Volt is 512 Watts Although I'm not really sure whether the modules were even able to fully light all LEDs at once, they had a built in shift register. At first I wired them directly to my parallel port and later wanted to wire an Atmega32 to it, but caused a short while playing around, bricking the development board. The modules rest in my basement, since.
I'm starting to see more & more DIY hardware articles on this site, articles that are perfectly at home on and more suited to Revision3's Systm, hackaday.com, hackedgadges.com & hacknmod.com - which incedentally is where I first saw this DIY LED array (hackedgadgets).
So is slashdot becomming yet another "Look At What You Can Build If You Have Teh Mad Hacking Skillz!!!11!!" site or what?
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
If you like playing with LEDs, follow the Hack A Day blog. At least once a week, there's a post involving home-brew LED projects, some of them quite massive and/or impressive. For instance,
Yoda says "Proudly fail is still fail"
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
The first thing I do with newly set up browsers (user interfaces in general) is to disable marquee.. blinking and then ads. I hate those things. They are distracting me and are hell of annoying. So why exactly should I want to put a huge marquee on my desk?
I found a couple hundred big 8x8 matrix LED displays on ebay for way too little money last year, and I'm working on a low-resolution but huge flat TV for video fun at Burning Man this summer.
But I'm going with a standard video signal such as your DVD player makes, so it will display shades of gray for realistic reproduction of video images.
It's a bit tricky to make a TV display out of LEDs, but I found that using a couple dozen FPGAs makes the job a lot easier. Pulse width modulation provides the brightness control per pixel.
It should be a lot of fun when completed. I';ll post photos.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Making something that's been around a long, long, long time, and acting as if it's 'new' or 'improved'.
Wake me when someone does something impressive, and get off my lawn.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
So the question is, if you're buying a MCU kit from a company, how is this a DIY project?
Not just for cars, pimp out your bike wheels...
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
I developed a Windows program which works with Betabrite signs. The USB connected LED-signs and software are available at: http://www.kitchi-rss.com/
I use it to show news, weather, and friend-updates.
It has some side features such as generating marquee HTML, wml, etc., so you don't immediately need an LED-sign to use the software.
There's also some free software available for that brand of LED-sign at: http://www.remote-control.net/
http://www.viktoria.se/fal/projects/glowbots/tech.html
See the "see-Puck Hardware and Software Bundle" zip file for documentation, source-code etc.
Wouldn't it be easier just to find a surplus beat up LED sign with a serial port and write a script to handle the updates? A lot of them have serial ports and they can be found on the cheap.
This is an awesome homebrew DIY project though, I'm just kinda lazy.
Ever wish you had one of those big LED displays to keep you up to date on e-mails, stock quotes, server uptimes, or weather?
No, of course I haven't. People actually buy those things? What the hell is wrong with people?
... and then they built the supercollider.
"This looks like a fun weekend project for someone looking to get started with electronics by building [b]something useful[/b]."
All I can say about that link, and 'houstonbofh (602064)'s link, is Damn! Glad I'm not an epileptic prone to Gran Mal seizures from flashy lights!
This has not been noticeable here in Stillwater, OK yet. At least in my experience, thankfully. (it's hell getting old and what it does to eyesight, among other effects)
It is getting more difficult every year driving at night as I age (pupils do not react as quick-night blindness) without this kind of 'advancement'.
*grumble, grumble-shakes walker defiantly* :-) As they say: YMMV!
I think this is where I am supposed to say: "Hey you kids!...Get off my lawn!", but that's not really my style...well, mostly not!
And before I get flamed, allow me to say that I am all for progress, new tech, etc....Life (and all it entails) is dynamic; constantly changing, growing, evolving. :-)
My Grandfather (yes-capitalized because he was that important to me) used to tell me that a strong running river or stream/creek grows few mosquitoes, but a stagnant pool breeds many.
That concept can be applied to many, if not most areas of our lives. Or at least it has worked for me!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I am glad you pointed this out!
Automotive electrical systems are designed around the concept of variable voltages, with a wider range than most computers.*
It's not uncommon (actually designed this way) for your '12 VDC' auto electrical system to vary between 13.6VDC-11.8VDC. (11.8 may be stretching the low end, but have have started my vehicle with low of 11.2VDC a few years back---I will gladly pass the baton here)
Most computers desire a more stable electrical environment than the usual auto can provide as is.
Computers (yes, even embedded chips qualify here for this discussion*) can be used easily in vehicles...with some forethought, and good engineering.
Oh yeah, I've just been informed I am too drunk to post on /. further. :-)
She's really cool most times!!
*I'm painting a broad brush here.
For this discussion, computer can equal embedded chips/systems to laptops mounted in police cars to rows and rows of racks of Super Computers)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
But we have been able to this for 20+ years, k, back then we peeked and poked parallel ports, add a bit of TTL magic, and Tada!
Now it's all "My LED got haxored because it only had Mcafee 2008"
TCP? for a display?
We have made the cart so fat, oil tanker fat, that we now need a fleet of horses, tugs, that we now need an admiral to command it all.
Bah humbug
Sod this, I'm off to argue with the weatherman on the telly.
to make a sign that says BOOBIES
It must be hard to get excited about learning electronics these days. When I was building stuff in high school (late 80's) part of the fun was that I could make things that I couldn't readily go out and buy... or that didn't exist. A little later with an early micro-controller I could put a computer in a tiny box and build brains into anything I wanted... something new.
Now everything's been pushed down a level and this project almost seems more like an exercise than a real project... It makes me kind of sad to think that my son (should he have any interest) probably won't enjoy actually building anything physical... at least not in this way.
Who knows, maybe desktop fabrication machines will open a whole new world of building and designing... Just sad to note the passing of this kind of stuff.
Pat