Hello Particle community,
I am hoping for an accessory recommendation. I am looking for a larger LED screen, approximately 12 x 18 inches in size, that I can control with an Electron. The use case is that I would like it to display multi-color text that is readable outdoors at a distance from 30-40 feet away (i.e. text size about 1.5 inches large).
Thank you,
PZebra
@PZebra, you could use a large dot-pitch 32x64 RGB Matrix Panel along with the RGBMatrixPanel library (on web IDE) to create some scrolling messages in up to 4096 colors. I have done this with a Photon (even did two panels for a 32x128 size!) but not with an Electron. I will have to test it but I don’t see any reason for it not to work.
I ran it on an Electron just fine.
Thanks for the quick responses. I will look into these more!
@peekay123 Sorry for what might be a stupid question, but how did you power the matrix panel in your application? Can it be powered by a standard USB input?
Nope. A panel that size will take up to 8 amps! I used a separate power supply which also power the Photon/Electron.
I’m powering a Photon & 64x32 pixel LED Matrix display from a 2 amp 5v USB power supply just fine, but I’m not lighting up all the pixels at once either. I’m displaying Time, Date, Weather, and Crypto price data in a constant loop.
So depending on how many LED’s you want to light up you could be able to get by powering everything from a 2 / 2.4 / 3A USB power supply without any problems. You just have to test the current that’s consumed when displaying the data you plan on displaying.
I was actually surprised at how little power the display was consuming for my application, it was a few hundred MA, not even close to 1A. I was thinking that it could run off a smallish battery all day without any problems. Just depends on how many LED’s you need to light up for your application.
