great project. pretty impressive

Posted at 4:46 am on May 25th, 2008 by aaron

They have provided interfacing instructions, protocol details yet no schematics or source? Right…

Posted at 5:37 am on May 25th, 2008 by mitch

That is incredibly impressive and must of cost a fortune – 3,456 blue leds…

Posted at 7:06 am on May 25th, 2008 by Alex

alex: The LEDs probably cost less than the hardware needed to control them. eBay is your friend, 1000 blue LEDs for $120: http://cgi.ebay.com/1000-PC-MegaBright-Blue-LED-5mm-7kmcd-Car-DIY-Free-R-SH_W0QQitemZ320162348895QQihZ011QQcategoryZ66954QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

Posted at 7:56 am on May 25th, 2008 by macegr

That must have been some exacting work, whether or not you get into a rhythm of the job.

Well done, seriously.

Posted at 8:11 am on May 25th, 2008 by strider_mt2k

Awesome work. I’d love to see it with some RGB leds.

Posted at 11:36 am on May 25th, 2008 by Ron

u need 3.5k blue leds 3.5k pwms and there controllers … $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Posted at 3:43 pm on May 25th, 2008 by Alex McCown

Alex: the LEDs are multiplexed so it reduces a lot of the hardware.

mitch: found their schematics, verilog, etc. in their open directory. Can be opened with Kicad.

https://whatever.metalab.at/projects/FPGAMatrix/schematics/

Posted at 12:04 am on May 26th, 2008 by jproach

wow awesome,

WTB: led matrix display

Posted at 3:51 am on May 27th, 2008 by rababerkuchen

They were working on this at Chaos Communication Camp in August of last year, and I helped them solder some of the LEDs. It was all done by hand with pencil-style irons. They had a lot left to do when I saw it, but they also had a fairly large group of people to do it.

Posted at 10:47 am on May 27th, 2008 by bendotron

Holly crap, that is a lot of LED. I would love to have my hands on that !!
Bendorton, good job with the soldering, you must be good :-)

- Dave

Posted at 9:11 pm on May 28th, 2008 by FPGA Boards

hi guys,
i am flo from viennas metalab and one of the initators of this project..

first, thanks for your great response thats really motivating :)

the schemantics WILL be available anytime soon, we just haven’t had the time to make a cool project page for that monster.

in july metalab will be hosting a demoparty and by then we should have a more serious project page with a lot more detailed information online.

the costs:
yes there were some.
actually it was very expensive.

i made a little homepage upfront with pics of other blinky things we built.
this homepage was modified so to say “led1.de”, “leds.de”,”led-shop…” and sent to the contact adresses of various online stores.
the page had these pics on it, a youtube video and a short message saying something like “ohai, we are a bunch of crazy guys with a lot motivation and we want to build this HUGE led matrix, will you sponsor us?”
finally we got high quality leds for 0.20 €/piece.
you dont want to get 0.1 cent leds just to find out they are class III and will not have the same radius or luminicity AFTER soldering 3456 of them together :P
the controllers cost a couple more 100er’s

if you are ever in vienna visit us!
we are austrias first hackerspace opened every day from 6pm-???.
http://www.metalab.at

:*
-flo

Posted at 8:26 am on May 29th, 2008 by Overflo

ah yes i forgot..
we got those leds SPONSORED from http://www.led1.de
they are crystal blue 5000 mcd

Posted at 8:30 am on May 29th, 2008 by overflo