Remark
This was thought up as a gift, but has ended up as a viable product being built in collaboration with Swapnil Devesh
Designing the object
Considering the form constraint, I decided to go with a simple rectangle that would showcase art on the
matrix display, invoking a retro nostalgia. Let’s call it LED Bored for now.
I wanted this object to be a natual part of a home, which meant the functionality had to be complimentary to regular home-type tasks and interactions. At the end I arrived at a basic design with changable panels on the display
| Panel | Description |
|---|---|
| Clock | A simple clock panel that shows time & optional weather |
| Spotify | A panel that shows the currently playing via Spotify Connect |
| Game of Life | A panel to simulate the game of life algorithm, seemed perfect for an LED matrix |
| Photo Gallery | A panel to show a collection of photos in a slideshow |
And since this was meant only as a gift and not for a large audience, I could get away with a vibe-coded app that would have to be installed manually by the user.
v0.1 - The RPi Version
I decided to go with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W as the base for this initially, as it was small & powerful enough for what I needed.
Once I got my head around the HUB75 flex cable’s connector, I could finally get to the next step and get the demo code running. For the software, I already had the basics of the panels from a previous e-ink photo frame project with ESP32, so it was just a matter of coming up with a good enough structure for the panels and then off to the races with Antigravity IDE.
Designing a 3D printable case for the board was a simple task with the display just being a rectangular slab. And of course, as life goes, this meant the other parts of making the board was going to be painful.
3D printing on one hand was a pain,
- getting my settings right,
- checking my layer heights for transparency,
- making sure screen cover could take the heat from the LEDs, and on and on and on…
And ~600g of wasted PLA later, I had a good enough case to prototype with.
Once I had a good working version, I decided to give the first gift.
They liked it, and even had so many suggestions on how it could be improved, which led to some changes for the second of the gift versions.
v0.2 - LED Boared - Gift Edition
A critical suggestion (among others) was the use of a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, which was actually overkill for what I needed. An ESP32 could do the job just as well and would be more power efficient. Alongside this, there were some hacks done to avoid soldering large wires and the power routing was a bit of a mess.
We started working on this version together, with Swpn writing out new software to use with ESP32 and me working on the case improvements.
The changes
- We moved to a better companion app, built with React Native for cross-platform support
- Case design was adjusted to add clearance for wires & header pins
- Swpn added OTA firware support for the product via the app & came up with a plan to scale this as a product
And finally, the gift was ready. I present to you, the LED Boared - Gift Edition.
But there was still something lacking, a bit more of a polish to make this a perfect sellable product. And so, I decided to work with Swpn to make that, read more on the next entry.