"Peggy," - A Light emitting pegboard display

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Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have released "Peggy" this is a great open source hardware project for LED art makers! -

With all the cool things that you can do with LEDs today, there is still one thing that's lacking: simplicity. If you want to run a bunch of LEDs at a time, you usually end up spending a fair bit of time worrying about series and parallel combinations, matching brightness, and picking load resistors. Or, if you're a beginner, maybe you only get one third of the way through the previous sentence-- wondering if you're already in over your head.

Suppose that you want to make a big LED display for your window or wall: maybe it's your logo, a symbol, your favorite 8-bit character, or maybe even a sign that spells out words like "OPEN" or "ON AIR." How do you go about it? The usual DIY solution involves drilling holes in a panel to fit your LEDs, then spending a heck of a lot of time wiring everything up-- ending up with one resistor per LED (and a three-dimensional mess if you happen to look at the back side of the panel). And, if you do everything in the most obvious ways, it can even end up consuming a surprising amount of power.

While I have certainly spent my share of time constructing things with the aforementioned technique, at some point it becomes clear that there has to be a better way. In this day and age, shouldn't LEDs be about as difficult to play with as, say, a Lite Bright? Today we are releasing a new open-source hardware and software design that takes some of the sting, complexity, and mess out of playing with LEDs. It's a versatile and powerful light-emitting pegboard that lets you efficiently drive hundreds of LEDs in whatever configuration you like, without so much as calculating a single load resistor.

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - "Peggy," - A Light emitting pegboard display Link.

Posted by Phillip Torrone | Feb 1, 2008 12:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics, Open source hardware | Permalink | Comments (2) Bookmark and Share

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Posted by: The Oracle on February 1, 2008 at 9:15 AM

When is version 2 coming out.

The one with a full panel of RGB LEDs and user programmable images.

Even as is, this could be a great product for retail signage.


Posted by: Chris Tucker on February 1, 2008 at 9:32 PM

Soon to be Banned in Boston.


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