IoT Broadway Marquee Sign

thingiverse

I created this custom sign for my Reddit Secret Santa giftee in 2018 since she was really into Broadway shows. I knew they use marquee letters to advertise their productions! Video all about it: https://youtu.be/oTSosQ7iYjU Each letter is 185mm tall with varying widths and amounts of WS2811 pixel lights (112 total). I designed the body and front frames in OpenSCAD then added the (12.6mm) holes for the pixels by hand using Blender because it was quicker. Holes were added to each letter to accept "mounting tabs" that were affixed to each letter's front frame in Blender. Each letter has a little triangular mounting "lip" on the back to make the sign wall-mountable. The controller box, which houses an ESP32 board sitting in a 6x4cm protoboard, also has mounting holes for screws. I added hot glue to each mounting "lip" to ensure they wouldn't slip while hung on the wall – hot glue has a rubbery, non-slip texture. I highly recommend configuring the top three pixels on either side of the Y to be clones of each other by making a 3-way split with your WS2811 pixels. After that third pixel comes up from the bottom, the signal will go to both sides simultaneously and it looks much nicer than going up one side then the other. For each letter, I added a male and female JST connector so they can be rearranged at-will to spell different things. I also made extra "extension cords" that allow placement of letters further apart from each other (so you can separate words). This isn't necessary but I do recommend it – it's really not THAT much more work, as you have to cut and solder all the wires anyway. The source code I used on the ESP32 board can be found here: https://github.com/riskable/wifi_broadway_sign