Maarten Janssen's 1016 LED Message Board Is a Neat Serial-Controlled Text Scroller Soldering Kit
With a decet of chunky 16-segment LEDs, this display scroller can be used standalone or connected to anything with a UART.
Maker Maarten Janssen has designed a kit that turns a decet of oversized 16-segment LEDs into a programmable message board — controllable from an external device over a simple serial link.
"With this kit you can make your own custom sign to show small texts, scrolling texts, and messages with fun animations on ten large 16-segment LED displays," Janssen writes of the 1016 LED Message Board kit. "It will make a very cool display that you can customize to make a message feed ticker, escape room display, score board or any kind of sign you want. The Message Board is really easy to use, programming is optional and even connecting it to an Arduino or another development board is optional."
As Janssen promises, the soldering kit is effectively standalone. Once assembled — using only through-hole components, with the surface-mount pins of the board's micro-USB power connector already soldered to the board — the message board will automatically display a message loaded into its non-volatile memory. Connecting to its serial port, though, allows for any custom message to be displayed — or the contents of NVRAM updated with a new boot-time message, without having to reprogram the board.
The serial interface is where the kit's true flexibility is shown. Messages can be sent from any device with a UART, or over USB using the kit's USB-UART bridge, and controlled using a simple markup language which sets the speed, message delay, alignment, and from 14 animations — plus a bonus 15th animation, in which a game of Snake is played on the display.
The kit is now available to order from the Cheerful Electronic Tindie store, priced at $43; for an additional $10, Janssen will assemble the kit on your behalf prior to shipping.
