Tobi’s Corner

Arduino Interface to Sureelectronic’s 6432 Dot Matrix 5mm Red LED Display Information Board.

Download PDE:

• surematrix.pde

Components:

• foam rubber as carrier for the LED’s
• 10mm diffuse RGB LED’s (I used those sold here: http://evilmadscience.com/partsmenu/89-led )
• silver wire
• insulating tape
• solder iron

First mark the spot where you want to add the LED’s on the foam rubber using some pen. I spaced them 20mm apart and printed some guides on a sheet of paper that i fixed on the rubber and pushed the LED’s through. After that I assembled one column and bended the R,G and B cathodes by 90 degree, shorted them at the next LED (using this one can only space the LED’s by the max. pin length) and solder the pins to next LED. So I proceeded all the way down. I did not cut the wires of the last LED, those I used to connect to the circuit board. After that I but some insulating tape on the connection to ovoid short circuits. After that I used the silver wire to connect the common anodes in a row. DONE !

Inspired by http://tinkerlog.com/2009/04/05/driving-an-led-with-or-without-a-resistor/ I started to build a USB driven display. I ordered some big green 5×7 dotmatrix display from http://evilmadscience.com/ and had a look at v-usb.

What you get when combining those is a via USB controllable dotmatrix display. The PC related programming I did in Python using libusb and the python binding called pyusb. So the program should be cross platform compatible! Also python allows one to extend the functionality(e.g. checking for new mail, usb notifications of any type…) very easy.

Video after the break.

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Part List:

• some High Power LED’s
• thermal pads (thermally conductive, electrically insulating, double coated tape)
• alu L profile
• wires
• costant current driver matching your LED’s

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Here you can see my IKEA Storm Lamp Mod using the powerRGB circuit and the tinyRGB firmware.

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