Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff

Massive dot-matrix LED sign, need help picking a technology

(1/4) > >>

pilotplater:
HI!

I am a pilot/flight instructor/hobbyist, and one of the things I do semi-regularly is take people flying who want to propose to their significant others. I want to design and build an LED sign that would fill a ~5 acre area. Resolution doesn't have to be great, I'm thinking have it display at least the text "will you marry me?", and ideally have it controlled centrally so the text could be customized with someone's name, and animated.

One of my first thoughts was battery operated modules using esp8266, but it would have to do some fancy ad-hoc connections to act as a shift register to send all the info out, as there's no position that will likely be in range of every receiver.

May end up going super simple route and just purpose-build the pattern to say "will you marry me?", and forget the dot matrix alltogether, but if anyone has some really cheap/reliable solution to interconnect hundreds of modules over a ~400m distance that'd be helpful. I don't really want to untangle a mile of TTL cable ;)

NiHaoMike:
Some sort of high power transmitter and a bunch of receivers would probably be the simplest solution. Probably 900MHz for ready made modules, or FSK over 27MHz CB radio. You could even put a directional antenna on the transmitter and transmit packets multiple times while sweeping the antenna.

Another solution is to have a lot of transceivers in a mesh, programmed to repeat packets to its neighbors. Some careful analysis would be needed to make a repeating algorithm that works without getting stuck in a loop, involving stuff like limiting the number of time to repeat each packet and consideration of timing to avoid collisions.

DaJMasta:
Rather than full dot matrix, you could just determine the ones you need to use for the animation and make those - like animated neon signs.  Should cut down on the number required by quite a bit.  The name customization would be tough then, though.

It sounds like you're talking about at least a hundred independent devices, and while I agree wireless is probably the right route, power is going to be tricky and setup is going to take a while too.... and given the time constraints and requirement for reuse, I think weatherproofing and reliability will be a big issue.  It may be worth adding a light beacon to a commercial, ruggedized, solution, just so you have a good option for keeping it powered, controlled, and weather-resistant.

If you were to design yourself, maybe a mesh network style system would be a better choice than regular wifi, but I still think making a setup you can use reliability for even a year or two is going to be a big technical challenge and is going to involve a lot of gathering up modules and replacing batteries.

mkschreder:
Perhaps a lora modem and solar panels for power with rechargable batteries for night time (that charge during the day)?

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

pilotplater:
DaJMasta - Definitely interested in commercial solutions, do you have one in mind for a similar purpose?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod