I have seen quite a few projects with LED matrices, specially the Pixel V2 or the GameFrame and the QR clock. All these projects are quite impressive, each offering something a bit different. My idea is to make a bit of each while keeping things simple and cost down, the total was around 100$.
- Like for the LED cube I made last year, I wanted an interactive drawing system where my son can paint in Processing and pass the pixel data through the Serial interface.
- In addition I tried to separate each LED to have a "cleaner" lighting; I removed the matrix front panel and replaced it by a laser cut grid. This gives the "square" look of Pixels we are familiar with. Then I covered the grid with two sheets of tracing paper to "blur" the lights (if someone has a better idea, please...)
- Since the Arduino library made by Adafruit does not work with the Teensy at the momen; I first wrote a code which helped me understand the working of the matrix but was two slow and flickered a lot. Then I found the code Markus Lipp published, thanks again. After a few tweaks, here is a simple sketch which will display an image and allow to change the color of each LED with a Serial message. With some additions, the code can also display animations from Serial or an SD card at 24bit colors and with a good frameRate.
Here is a Sketch for the Teensy 3 or 3.1. I use some pins which are underneath for the matrix, so that I still have the SPI pins for an SD card and Serial 2 to play with Bluetooth. If you want to use this code with the top pins only, you can change PORTB to PORTC.
- Like for the LED cube I made last year, I wanted an interactive drawing system where my son can paint in Processing and pass the pixel data through the Serial interface.
- In addition I tried to separate each LED to have a "cleaner" lighting; I removed the matrix front panel and replaced it by a laser cut grid. This gives the "square" look of Pixels we are familiar with. Then I covered the grid with two sheets of tracing paper to "blur" the lights (if someone has a better idea, please...)
- Since the Arduino library made by Adafruit does not work with the Teensy at the momen; I first wrote a code which helped me understand the working of the matrix but was two slow and flickered a lot. Then I found the code Markus Lipp published, thanks again. After a few tweaks, here is a simple sketch which will display an image and allow to change the color of each LED with a Serial message. With some additions, the code can also display animations from Serial or an SD card at 24bit colors and with a good frameRate.
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| Can you read this QR code? I am using the QRduino library to generate QR codes. With the Teensy RTC capability it is possible to make a fun clock! |
Here is a Sketch for the Teensy 3 or 3.1. I use some pins which are underneath for the matrix, so that I still have the SPI pins for an SD card and Serial 2 to play with Bluetooth. If you want to use this code with the top pins only, you can change PORTB to PORTC.
