Hendy’s Law (pixels per dollar)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#Other_formulations_and_similar_laws

Pixels per dollar. Similarly, Barry Hendy of Kodak Australia has plotted the "pixels per dollar" as a basic measure of value for a digital camera, demonstrating the historical linearity (on a log scale) of this market and the opportunity to predict the future trend of digital camera price, LCD and LED screens and resolution.

Tubular POV display

http://hackaday.com/2012/01/20/tubular-pov-display

[Ryan]‘s cylinder POV display is an amazing piece of work. Right now it’s impressive sitting on his workbench, but we’re sure it would be astonishing hanging above the middle of a dance floor. There are 64 RGB LEDs on this display and they’re certainly bright enough to liven up any space.

Power is provided through a slip ring. The ground is connected to the shaft of the motor [Ryan] picked up at an auto parts store. It’s an efficient way to do things, but the display can only be controlled by whatever image is stored in the ATMega1284′s flash memory. [Ryan] admits this isn’t an ideal setup so he’s working on a ZigBee or Bluetooth connection.

We’ve seen some amazing spinny POV cylinders, but [Ryan]‘s build looks amazingly professional. All the board files, schematics and code are uploaded, as well as an image converter for BMPs and PNGs. Check out the demo after the break.

Video display from RGB LED strips

From Hack a day

Video display from RGB strips makes it seem so easy

posted Nov 18th 2011 11:01am by Mike Szczys
filed under: led hacks

[Fabien] wrote in to share a link to this RGB video display which he made. He’s got some pretty cool routines that make it more functional than you would think, but first we want to comment on the construction. He used an RGB strip, which makes this look like an incredibly simple build. The strip has a data and power bus running the length of it. You can it into smaller segments, then just solder jumper wires to reconnect the buses. That’s exactly what he did here, making it what must be the fastest method of putting together a display of this size (16×10 pixels).

It’s driven by a Netduino which easily addresses the LPD8806 drivers responsible for the LEDs. It gets input from a computer via Xbee, making it easy to include data from the net, or to push visualizations. The video after the break shows a [Van Gogh] self-portrait. Since 160 pixel resolution wouldn’t do it justice, the visualization software shows a zoomed in portion of the painting which is constantly panning to let you see the entire work. It’s a fabulous effect.

G-35 Christmas lights do make a great LED matrix

http://hackaday.com/2011/11/07/g-35-christmas-lights-do-make-a-great-led-matrix

G-35 Christmas lights do make a great LED matrix

This fully-addressable RGB LED matrix was built by [John Graham-Cummings]. He didn’t start from scratch, but wisely repurposed a strand of GE Color Effect lights andbuilt a pleasant looking case in which to mount the G-35 hardware.

We’ve seen this hardware used in a similar way before. Because each ‘bulb’ has its own microcontroller, color data is shifted in via a serial bus. Orient the modules in any pattern you choose and account for that layout in software.

Since the strings have 50 bulbs, [John] simply cut off the one on the end to form his 7×7 matrix with the remaining 49 units. A square of plywood with a grid of holes holds each in place. Cord mess is not a problem as the extra was cut out and the remainders were soldered together again. [John] uses an Arduino Pro to feed in the data, which you can see for yourself in the clip after the break.

Wearable video coat

This is just too nerdy. 
 
From http://hackaday.com/2011/07/12/wearable-video-coat

[David Forbes] is no stranger to the weird and esoteric, so he created a color LED TV built into a lab coat. He plans on bringing it to Burning Man next month.
The RGB LEDs are mounted narrow flex boards, providing a 160×120 pixel NTSC display. Video processing is taken care of by an Xilinx FPGA that takes the YCrCb video feed from a video iPod and converts it into four separate RGB streams for the front, back, and the two sides. The requisite controls for brightness and color are on the shoulders.
Of course, the build wouldn’t be over-the-top without the ability to plug a Nintendo into a lab coat, so there’s an NTSC input on an RCA jack. Everything is powered by two 11.1 V, 5Ah radio-control LiPo battery packs that should power this for a while.
Check out a video of the LED lab coat below.

Aj the laser show guy on the worlds largest HD TV Screen.

 Aj Seabeck of Stellar Designs on the worlds largest HDTV Screen at Dallas Cowboys stadium.

He's on tour with the StarWars in Concert series and the show's come to Dallas.  Such a long way from such beginnings as the A/V nerd of Clifton Senior High school.

The massive display weighs 600 tons, is 180 feet long and 72 feet tall. It's made of 10.5 million LEDs.  13000 square feet display was installed back in May of 2009.