I looked at the stock after some years of it collecting dust and I got these flip dots :
- 210 rows of 7 dots, 10mm. That makes approx. 35×42px, 1470 total. The surface is barely enough.
- 2 arrays of 28×16px, with octogonal dots, 15mm. The can only be tiled into a 56×16px array.
- 3 arrays of 24×16 squares, 10mm pitch. They can be tiled into 24×48px but the surface is still too small.
And a couple of large arrays in bad shape and hard to drive.
I have several 28×7 arrays in 15mm but they can't be tiled vertically.
Sam tried to
- unsolder the flip dots, and failed
- hack/saw the extra PCB and failed.
Ideally the dots should be around 1 inch wide, or 25mm. That's 40 dots per mètre.
In the early days of the project, I tried to make a RGB LED array using strips but
- it was still expensive
- it draws a LOT of current to make something clearly visible in all conditions
- consequently it dissipates a LOT of heat, requiring an aluminium backplate for extra heat conduction, and clearance in the back to let the air flow.
- Separator boxes must be built, with a proper optical design that diffuses the LED's spot without losing too much light/contrast
- It's still about as fragile as flip dots, without the noises or the null static current, and RGB strips are not ultra-reliable as well.
I don't have the budget to get modules from AlfaZeta so the last possibility would be to safely recover the 7× strips from Hanover modules, which is going to be a mess... It would require a whole box, or about 14 modules 28×7, to build a 64×42 array, supposing recovery was 95% good.
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