LEDs invade coffee table crevice

posted Mar 8th 2010 2:44pm by Mike Szczys
filed under: home hacks, led hacks

That’s a lot of LEDs, and a little bit of glass cleaner. [Tobias] spiced up his IKEA coffee table by adding 6144 LEDs. This is a larger realization of SparkFun’s LED coffee table which used 64 8×8 modules. [Tobias] sourced three display boards from Sure Electronics for a total of 96 8×8 modules. These boards are addressed through a serial interface; four serial lines for each board but a shared data bus for each of the row select pins and the data/latch/clock pins. This method uses 19 of the 20 pins on the Arduino that drives the display. After the break you can see a demonstration. If this is more than you need there’s always the 112-LED and 81-LED table projects that can produce a full color range.

Comments [33]

tagged: 8x8, coffee table, ikea, led, sure electronics

Reader Comments

Truly epic…always wanted to do something awesome with those Sure LED panels!

Posted at 2:50 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by macegr

first?

Posted at 2:52 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by funkja

no freaking way

Posted at 3:04 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by mrgoogfan

I dunno. I like LED displays as much as the next guy, but as you up the resolution at some point I think it just starts looking like a low-res monitor and loses much of the charm.

Posted at 3:23 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by Gene

so he didn’t have to solder 12,288 connections?

Posted at 3:24 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by jeditalian

has somebody already taken a giant flatscreen tv, laid it on its back, put a sheet of glass over it, and called it a coffee table? paired with wireless video cable (if that exists, if not.. hackaway!)
coffee table computer monitor xD
then your screensaver would be a coffeetablesaver and that would kickass

Posted at 3:29 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by jeditalian

Sureelectronics is awesome!
So is this, but I agree with the comments about it being rather low res.

Posted at 3:47 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by sephamorr

@jeditalian:
Yes, there were some builds with similar concepts in an issue of c’t (german computer magazine) some years ago.

Posted at 3:51 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by Freax

Would be pretty cool for audio visualizations.

Posted at 4:13 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by OrganizedChaos

wow, haven’t seen this before.

Posted at 4:29 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by Sigh

He should really use the SPI bus for this sort of thing.

Posted at 4:39 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by gbpic

One thing I don’t get, the link to that sureelectronics shop is for a red led panel, the used panels are clearly not only red.

Posted at 4:58 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by polossatik

proper link is http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=147

Posted at 5:00 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by polossatik

i hope they multiplexed O_o

Posted at 5:08 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by BiOzZ

Why not have is display your favourite RSS feed or some primative video games, thats it giant pong clock coffee table!

Posted at 5:15 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by HIrudinea

Sad that it’s only red/green, those are decent prices for serial based LED panels.

@BiOzZ they didn’t have to, the display panels handle that for you. They just sent data to them in serial.

@gbpic I agree, but he clearly didn’t have a choice, the display panels have their own interface.

Posted at 5:31 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by Mikey

Here is a chip that can do VGA w/ arduino:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8541

Posted at 6:47 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by konsumer

Here is another nice one, even cheaper:
http://store.fungizmos.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65&products_id=290&zenid=f6c908824ae251886ba5613a94389214
this one does basic ansi, but also provides TV-out and PS/2 input.

Posted at 7:00 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by konsumer

Another lame adruino table …

Posted at 7:47 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by Lou Skunt

Shame it’s not RGB, but it is still pretty cool. What I would do is salvage a couple of diffuser sheets from a busted LCD TV and lay them on top of the LEDs.

It would be great to create procedural effects on that thing, ranging from game of life to nice vortex and “plasma” stuff.

@Lou Skunt: I’m interested to see what projects you have undertaken so far?

Posted at 8:36 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by Tachikoma

LEDs!

Posted at 10:53 pm on Mar 8th, 2010 by jim

…who has a coffee table anyway?

Posted at 12:00 am on Mar 9th, 2010 by markii

@jeditalian yes they have! and they are multitouch, check out nuigroup for all of your laid on back flat screen multitouch coffee table goodness!

Posted at 3:37 am on Mar 9th, 2010 by grovenstien

I’m with the monitor/tv sentiments here…

http://technabob.com/blog/2009/09/05/mac-tablet-coffee-table-casemod/

Posted at 5:50 am on Mar 9th, 2010 by Agent420

Looks nice. I like the tables with active response displays though…

Posted at 8:42 am on Mar 9th, 2010 by Circuitmage

Buy a monitor for 1/5th the money, screw it under the table, if you prefer low res write a driver that displays virtual LED on it or slam a grid on it to obscure the full resolution.

Posted at 9:22 am on Mar 9th, 2010 by Whatnot

It’s not a “coffee” table, you’d never put a coffee mug down on that thing! More of a shin-hacker, did you see the overhang on the glass?

Great table tho, would also love to see it RGB for ambient effects!

Posted at 11:54 am on Mar 9th, 2010 by CapitalC

How many more LED tables is HaD going to cover?

Posted at 11:59 am on Mar 9th, 2010 by Rob

This needs to be playing John Conway’s Game of Life…

Posted at 4:19 pm on Mar 9th, 2010 by twistedsymphony

must avoid temptation to build…

Posted at 12:34 am on Mar 10th, 2010 by hintss

wait, dosen’t the display board that the hackaday links to a red-only one? and dosen’t the video show red and green

Posted at 12:39 am on Mar 10th, 2010 by hintss

sorry for th triple post, but I found this ikea table:

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50087072

its proabably more expensive, ut you can fit the electronics into the drawer

Posted at 12:51 am on Mar 10th, 2010 by hintss

how much would this cost roughly?
ive wanted to build an LED coffee table/wall panel for a while now, they seem to be getting better.

what would be a decent resource for learning to multiplex these type of panels?

Posted at 6:18 am on Mar 10th, 2010 by Illlion

LEDs invade coffee table crevice

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