Help choosing LEDs and Display for a new project

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Hey everybody - I am working on a new project that will fall under the theme of our Enchanted Objects contest (just for fun not entry!)

I’ll be doing a live “House Cup” tracker from Harry Potter. http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/House_Cup

I’ve got the inputs worked on in terms of how one grants or takes away points, but I’m not sure how I want to do the display of current scores. I thought you all would be able to help point me towards the right LEDs or displays to use.

This could be done on one big LED board, but I also think it may be cool to do 4 separate displays - the end goal of this will be to have it as a fun interactive piece of art in my niece’s room!

I’ve drawn up a quick sketch of what I’ve been imagining this could look like - please try not to be intimidated by my artistic skills.

Any and all hardware recs for the display would be welcomed and appreciated!

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These things: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11861 are awesome and fairly cheap. I haven’t looked around but I’m sure there are other colors for the LED matrix

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@Steph, you could use Adafruit neopixels along some a couple of great neopixel libraries in the IDE to build your “board”. The beauty of neopixels is that YOU chose the colors and they can even “scintillate” or other cool effects. @BDub is a beast at using these things (he put together the amazingly popular Neopixel library!). Cool idea! :smile:

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Thanks @harrisonhjones and @peekay123!!! I will check those out.

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@steph I really love your project idea and can’t wait to see it come together :smile:

Adafruit has a FEW :laughing: led products:
http://www.adafruit.com/search?q=led&b=1

The squarish I2C LED matrix bricks would be great… available in amber, yellow, green, blue and white for $12 each, 10% off tomorrow night :wink:

You know what would also be great? Minishift displays :wink:
http://www.arachnidlabs.com/minishift/ I don’t think they come in different colors though, so maybe stick with the adafruit ones… because it’s basically going to be the same deal for control.

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Thanks @Bdub!! Ok, ordered a matrix from Adafruit…I’ll be back with more questions!

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Hey all -

I’ve finally gotten some time to work on my LED display project and would love some feedback as to whether I’m setting up my hardware correctly. Thanks to @Dave I believe I ordered the right tools.

Here is how I have power currently set up:


I did this using [Adafruit's wiring guide][1] which I used in conjunction with @peekay123's [great notes][2] on wiring to a Core. Here's how things look at the moment:

LEDs are on and next step is coding :smile: I’ll keep you posted!

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@Steph, I love the fact that you have a Maker heart! You just reminded me to update my instructions for wiring to the accelerated version of the RGB Matrix code which is enabled with a #define. That code makes use of full port writing instead of single-bit-at-a-time writing, making the refresh rate really fast. All that is required is some minor wiring mods. You can play with the demo apps in the meantime. :smile:

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@peekay123 aha I was just about to ask some questions about code. I got the testcolors app working but am now a bit stuck on examples.

I’ve added scrolltext-16x32.ino to my app and tried to verify. Which it didn’t. So I’ve added the ADAFRUIT_MFGFX.h as well. Now when I’m verifying I’m getting quite a long error message that I’m not sure what to do with:

    In file included from ../inc/spark_wiring.h:29:0,
from ../inc/application.h:29,
from Adafruit_mfGFX/Adafruit_mfGFX.h:4,
from Adafruit_mfGFX/Adafruit_mfGFX.cpp:40:
../../core-common-lib/SPARK_Firmware_Driver/inc/config.h:12:2: warning: #warning "Defaulting to Release Build" [-Wcpp]
#warning "Defaulting to Release Build"
^
Adafruit_mfGFX/Adafruit_mfGFX.cpp: In member function 'void Adafruit_GFX::drawChar(int16_t, int16_t, unsigned char, uint16_t, uint16_t, uint8_t)':
Adafruit_mfGFX/Adafruit_mfGFX.cpp:485:7: warning: 'line' may be used uninitialized in this function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
if (line & 0x80) {
^
In file included from ../inc/spark_wiring.h:29:0,
from ../inc/application.h:29,
from Adafruit_mfGFX/fonts.h:14,
from Adafruit_mfGFX/fonts.cpp:11:
../../core-common-lib/SPARK_Firmware_Driver/inc/config.h:12:2: warning: #warning "Defaulting to Release Build" [-Wcpp]
#warning "Defaulting to Release Build"
^
In file included from ../inc/spark_wiring.h:29:0,
from ../inc/application.h:29,
from RGBmatrixPanel/../Adafruit_mfGFX/Adafruit_mfGFX.h:4,
from RGBmatrixPanel/RGBmatrixPanel.h:3,
from RGBmatrixPanel/RGBmatrixPanel.cpp:39:
../../core-common-lib/SPARK_Firmware_Driver/inc/config.h:12:2: warning: #warning "Defaulting to Release Build" [-Wcpp]
#warning "Defaulting to Release Build"
^

    RGBmatrixPanel/RGBmatrixPanel.cpp:41:54: fatal error: ../SparkIntervalTimer/SparkIntervalTimer.h: No such file or directory
    #include "../SparkIntervalTimer/SparkIntervalTimer.h"
    ^
    compilation terminated.
    make: *** [RGBmatrixPanel/RGBmatrixPanel.o] Error

Any guidance or help would be very appreciated!!

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@peekay123 Eek nevermind! Got it to verify :slight_smile:

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