What happens when a bored EE gets ahold of 57,600 LEDs

[MrForbes]

What my brother has been up to lately. Almost done....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtSm8Oom2n4

[rsisk]

Awesome!

[Leav]

youtube is erroring out on me so I can't comment so i'll post my questions here:

Wow it's like 21st century chain mail!
does it get hot?
what are you using to control the LEDs?
what plays the video and what do you use for the video processing?

you could mount a fisheye camera on the front and back and make some sort of high-visibility-invisibility cloak! :)

by the way, I got referred here by your brother from chiefdelphi.com :)

[Colin P]

This is too cool. I'm starting to fear the day when we have to see people's facebook statuses displayed on their own clothing....

[davidthefat]

Can it me made waterproof? Or at least water resistant?

[MrForbes]

A few half answers: It uses all custom circuitry. I think he said it has a couple DSPs to process the video. The video input is just a normal yellow RCA jack for composite video. Resolution is 160x120. He said it gets warm..... It's powered by a few lithium battery packs, one plan is to install them in some shoes!

He's been working on this project for a few months. It's been fun watching the progress, and the design changes as he figured things out. The flex circuit boards are expensive, and that many LEDs are expensive.

[nixiebunny]

What he said! It gets warm because it's a polyester lab coat with another layer of plastic insulation. The whole thing dissipates 100 W, which is about 20 milliwatts per square inch.

I wrote a bunch of VHDL code to convert digitized video to RGB pulse width modulation for the LEDs. It works just like the billboards, but thinner.

I wouldn't mind spraying some conformal coating on it to make it water resistant. I'll have to ask my friend who works at an LED billboard company for recommended products.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Well, there is always quantity pricing. Based on my experience with LED lighting wall panels, they do get hot after a while. In addition, the scanning of the array produces horrendous RF near the panel. Keep mics away from the panel and the wiring.
A few years ago, I was walking the floor at a component exposition and turned the corner to face an LED manufacturer's display. I could feel the heat from about ten feet away. The display was all of their products mounted on a single panel about six foot high and two to three foot wide. I think it was ledtronix.

[Tristan Lall]

What size LEDs are being used? (I remember, about 5 years ago, there were SMT LEDs available in sizes as small as roughly 0.5 mm × 0.8 mm × 1.2 mm, or multicolour ones in 4.0 mm × 4.0 mm × 2.5 mm packages. I think Osram Sylvania was the manufacturer I'd used.)

I'm also pleasantly impressed by the fact that someone is putting all those Arduino-based units of clothing to shame. :) (There are a few genuinely innovative ones, but for the most part, the novelty of a string of flashing lights in a jacket wore off a couple of years ago. Making it into a TV raises the bar.)

[nixiebunny]

The LEDs are the standard 0603 size, 1.6mm x 0.8mm. They are made by Kingbright, and come on reels. I bought 22,000 of each of R,G and B types. Surprisingly, green costs twice as much as blue.

This display runs at much lower power than a typical LED billboard, since it's designed for use indoors or at night. Curiously, the idle current of the 1,000 driver chips (15mA at 3.3V) uses as much power as the LEDs themselves.

[DonRotolo]

OMG that is awesome! Although the phrase "too much time on your hands" comes to mind...

Now to connect video cameras that show the scene 180 degrees from the LED, making an effective invisibility cloak lab apron.

[billbo911]

Now to connect video cameras that show the scene 180 degrees from the LED, making an effective invisibility cloak lab apron.

3 to 4 cameras and a little video processing ought to do the trick. ;)

[Bryan Herbst]

This is definitely one of the coolest things I have seen recently.

The Lampduino I am building pales in comparison. I have a measly 8x8 grid!

[gblake]

So.... I want to write something snarky about the suit Will-I-Am wore at the World Championship, but I'm fighting the urge.

Perhaps next year's championship's entertainment should feature Squirrel's brother? :ahh:

;)

Blake

[MrForbes]

A little update on his web page

http://www.cathodecorner.com/videocoat/

[rachelholladay]

That is awesome! Kinda makes me want to have one..

[Bryan Herbst]

Heard about it again on the radio yesterday (the hosts called it "nerd cool"), and it is featured on Engadget today!

http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/13/wearable-lab-coat-tv-packs-thousands-of-leds-heads-for-burning/

[davidthefat]

That cost 20 grand to make! Oh my...

[MrForbes]

57,600 LEDs cost a lot of money, even if they're only a dime or a quarter a piece.

The flex circuit boards and automated soldering are also expensive.

But the real expensive part is the six months it took to figure it all out.

[Andrew Lawrence]

It's featured on thedailywhat Geek!

http://geeks.thedailywh.at/2011/07/12/wearable-tv-of-the-day/

[MrForbes]

neat! It's all over the tech/geek/nerd blogs. Interesting about the batteries, everyone is so concerned about battery life...he has 5 sets of batteries for it already. They fit in your pockets, one on each side.