Glass Block LED Matrix

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Hive13 Project
Glass Block LED Matrix
[[<flickr>4036597204|200px]]
Status: Active
Start Date: 10/21/2009


Overview

Turn the glass block wall in the bathroom at the Hive into a giant LED matrix.

Plan

TODO List

  • Measure out and mark holes on the PVC pipes
  • Drill out holes in the PVC Pipes
  • Wire up the RGB LEDs
  • Punchdown the RGB LED leads
  • create "plug-in" PCB out of perfboard to plug into Rainbowduino

Parts

Part Source Status Description
Rainbowduino http://www.nkcelectronics.com/rainbowduino-led-driver-platform.html cjdavis has purchased and received. Thanks to Great customer service from NKC Electronics - http://www.nkcelectronics.com/) LED matrix controller http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/rainbowduino-led-driver-platform-plug-and-shine-p-371.html, can be daisy chained together, or used singly
56 X RGB LEDs Many 7 purchased from NKC Electronics and received, and Dave ordered and received 70 of these here: http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=159 shiny; (rainbowduino needs common anode type!)
Connector board DIY (http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=716, http://www.winfordeng.com/products/cat_pbc.php) We have a piece of perfboard, and some header. Need terminal strips or similar. Daughter board to plug into the rainbowduino headers and hold connectors for the LED wire harness. Turns out this is not going to be particularly complicated, just tedious. We simply need to wire up a breadboard with 4 RJ45 connectors, one each for red, green, blue, and power. This will require: perfboard, 4 RJ45 connectors, 32 header pins, a whole bunch of jumpers, and some patience with the soldering iron. Alternate possibility: one 25-pin d-sub connector to the 24 RGB lines, plus one RJ45 connector to the 8 anode lines. Build the connector board right into the frame without detachable connections. Plug the Rainbowduino directly into the big board.
Wire harness Misc TBD Ethernet cabling and connectors - also turns out to be pretty simple. Anode lines will be connected down each column, and the RGB lines will be connected across each row. Everything will terminate in 4 RJ45 sockets, which can simply be connected to the daughterboard with cat-5 Ethernet cables.
Power supply Not sure if we have a good power supply yet? Rainbowduino will take anywhere between 5.5v and 9v, but is highly recommended to stay with 6-6.5v

Construction

<flickr>4167041854|m|right|thumb</flickr>

  • Information
    • Each glass block is 7.5" square with an average of 0.56" of grout on either side.
    • The window is 7 blocks wide, and 8 blocks tall.
    • There is no grout on the sides of the window or the top // bottom
  • We have decided to use PVC pipe in a framework to hold the LEDs, the wireing will run through the pipes to a punchdown board which will then go to a PCB daughterboard plugged into the Rainbowduino.

Programming

Uploading to RainbowDuino

  • to get a sketch to upload to RanbowDuino, we used the method described at these links:
  • our method was:
    1. remove the atmega chip from an Arduino Duemilanove (we're using it simply as the USB-TTL interface)
    2. connect the pins in the table below from the arduino to the rainbowduino
    3. choose the "Diecimila or Duemilanove with Atmega168" as your board in the Arduino IDE
    4. compile and upload in the Arduino IDE
      • for the compile to work you will probably need to drop the Rainbowduino libraries in the appropriate folder ( I tried dropping them everywhere until it worked, I think they go somewhere under /hardware/ but will have to double check)
RainbowDuino Pin Arduino Pin
GND [pin 5 or 1] GND
VCC [pin 4] 5V
TXD [pin 3] TX [digital pin 1]
RXD [pin 2] RX [digital pin 0]
DTR [pin 0] RESET

Alternate Method to Upload to Rainbowduino - using USB->TTL cable instead of inline arduino

<flickr>4123105119|m|center</flickr> <flickr>4123886152|m|center</flickr>

We got it to work this way using a "MakerBot" USB->TTL cable. Yes, I know the pictures are bad and there are two white wires. Will detail the pinout later...

Pictures

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YouTube Video of test rig
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Videos

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