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Maker Shawn “sjm4306” Maxwell has proven off a household of tileable 8×8 RGB LED matrices — constructed across the compact SK6805, reasonably than the extra widespread and noticeably bigger WS2812 5050.
“I’ve needed to make a tiny RGB [LED] matrix that was straightforward to chain collectively to kind bigger shows for fairly some time,” Maxwell explains of the inspiration behind his venture, “and seeing LixieLabs’ new Pixie Chroma impressed me to design one thing comparable however on the identical time completely different.”
Maxwell started his journey constructing bigger 5×7 LED matrices from the favored WS2812 5050 — a chunky and vibrant addressable RGB LED which finds its means into a variety of initiatives. “I needed to make one thing I might simply solder with my current meager stenciling and reflow abilities,” he explains, “and at last debugging a bigger board with much less elements can be far simpler than the other.”
Having constructed a number of of the WS2812 boards which confirmed the feasibility of the general plan — particular person matrices which might be tiled alongside their edge, offering a simple path to enlargement — it was time to downscale.
The matrices are tileable, although want a brand new addressing technique to deal with greater than 564 particular person LEDs. (📷: sjm4306)
“Now I used to be snug with transferring on to the a lot tinier SK6805-EC15. This actually examined my PCB design and structure abilities, particularly contemplating I restricted myself to double layer and the requirement that the boards needed to be soldered facet by facet with no seen hole,” Maxwell explains. “I ended up pushing JLCPCB nearly proper as much as their limits by way of minimal through and hint dimensions.
“After a few week I had a batch of 10 of the brand new boards in hand. I additionally ordered a solder stencil… I am insane however not the hand solder 64 15mm RGB LEDs sort of insane! And for essentially the most half they appeared fantastic… besides I lower very near the highest proper edge with a single through which the sting route ate into. I’ve since modified the board to maneuver the through as shut as I might away from the sting so we’ll see the way it seems subsequent time.”
The total manufacturing run cooperating — bar the final hundred or so pixels. (📷: sjm4306)
Maxwell constructed up the ten boards he ordered, and organized them right into a 5×2 matrix-of-matrices – then found, whereas porting a library for printing textual content to the show, that the ATmega328P used to regulate the matrix maxed out at 564 LEDs — a bit of shy of the 640 within the full matrix.
Full particulars can be found on Maxwell’s Hackaday.io venture web page, together with design recordsdata for each the large-scale and extra compact matrix boards beneath an unspecified open supply license.
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