RGB Matrix Stand

thingiverse

Laser cut stand for 6 X 10 addressable RGB LEDs. I recently purchased a 3.2ft string of WS2812 addressable RGB LEDs to play with. They can be cut at certain points along the tape to make a strip as long or short as you want, or you can jumper together multiple strings to make a longer unit. Since a wiggly coil of flashing lights on my bench didn't appeal to me, I decided to cut them apart and make a 6 X 10 matrix (this strip had 60 LEDs on it). I was going to 3D print a mount of some type, but figured this might be a good time to whip out the ol' laser engraver/cutter and put it to use. I designed a simple mount for the lights in SketchUp to make sure everything was going to fit together, and then simplified the drawing for export to a DXF file, which is easily imported into my laser software. I'm using the latest build of LaserWeb (4.0.990) to control the laser. I used 3mm birch plywood for my material. My laser is only 7W, so I made two passes at 75% power, moving at 100mm/min. It cut through 99% cleanly, requiring only a small amount of exactoing to get a few of the pieces out. The board for the LED's slides into the three stands and then two cross braces are slid into place and locked down. This allows the whole thing be broken down and stored in a compact manner. Everything could be glued for a permanent fixture. Once everything was cut out, I cut the LED strip apart and stuck them to the backingboard using the sticky tape that comes on them. Then wired them up, and slid the board into the stand and installed the cross braces. The whole thing is about the size of a small tablet, and is easy to place next to a breadboard on my bench. In addition to using a standalone Arduino to drive the matrix, I've also been playing with a PC based piece of software called "Glediator". It's basically a DJ mixing board for lights. It was a pain to get talking to the Arduino UNO, but works pretty well once the PC and UNO start talking (hint: if using an x64 PC, install the x32 RXTX). The UNO can power this small matrix without issue, but if you build a bigger one, you may want to run power directly to the LED's.