LED Matrix controlled with Arduino and VVVV

vvvv beta question
1

Hello guys,
I want to built an LED Matrix with VVVV and Arduino. Can anyone of you help me where I should start. Or is in the forum some discription how I can solve this problem?
By the way…It’s important for the project to use the Arduino platform for the electronical stuff and to control the LED’s with VVVV.

I hope someone can help me…

2

ok, so no one answers.
Then another Idea.
Does anyone know how to built a DMX Light Matrix
controlled with the Arduino.
Or has anyone an idea how to start?

3

you really need to use arduino ?
yo can go with dmx ( entec usb to dmx ), i think it will be much simpler

4

It would help if you described more about what kind of LED-matrix you want to build.

5

Hi roman_g

i do not know 100% what you want to do , but i few things :

for making a dmx controller with arduino you need a chip 485 and a 100ohms resistor you have tutorial in the arduino playground , i remember a clean example code from tinker for rgb leds .

you can play with pipet for example to get the color of a texture and output to your leds .

there are some aleredy built led matrix for arduino that may help to see the hardware used in arduino playground .

cheers

6

hi roman, dont go to pure dmx stuff with the arduino, signal ( electrically talking) is usually a mess and strange things are occuring with other devices on the chain

Doing an arduino controller with an ethernet shield is a good solution, and cheapper and less complex.
Check my user page, i have a sketch on it to use ethershield, and demultiplexer with art-net. Using ethernet will be easier, and faster.

About your matrix of leds, it depends really about your resolution ( how many leds), and if its colored ( RGB matrix) or monocolor.

7

yes artnet much much nicer

8

there is rainbowduino who doesn’t seams bad , it can be chain , you can do a 64 led rgb matrix or 64*3 single color matrix.

9

Looks good Sanch.

What’s it like to program? Have you controlled it from vvvv before?

And how many can be chained? I need to control 960 leds!

10

you can use IC2 port to chain arduinos also

but personnaly i would better go on MEGA more outputs in io

11

You have a matrix who is already build ? is it dmx?
if you need to drive so much led you’d better go for a more proffessionnal system .

12

I need to control a load of 7 segment led modules like these - http://uk.farnell.com/avago-technologies/hdsp-c2a1/led-display-56-8mm-deep-red-ca/dp/1830047

120 of them (so 960 leds)

That would require 5 rainbowduinos (I just read that you can chain up to 16).

What would you class as a more professional system?

13

dmx fixture, professionnal stuff.
it depends of your needs and constrain

is it for an art installation, or for entertainement, question of budget, and how many days, years, it will play. do you have customers, or is it for the fun or for beauty of art…

agreeing with sanch if its for commercial field

anyway rainbowduino has its own atmega, so you can program it also in standalone. no arduino needed, and arduino compatible for code

14

check ucapps.de as well

15

Since this is a king of custom matrix rainbowduino might work , problem you could face is bandwith , so updating all this led from vvvv might be very slow.
Also you might have a really huge amount of work building the matrix , i guess you plan do design a pcb for the matrix?

16

bandwith:
not sure, depends if you are sending a text to be printed or 960 channels. Changing Baudrates from 9600 to higher rates solves usually bandwiths.

You may imagine using different arduino in I2C connexion, to avoid latency, better than one doing all the stuff. Main trouble is time of demultplexion.

artnet and ethernet are difinitively for me the more quick and stable solution to work with an amount of 960 Leds and to interface easely with vvvv or other software, letting to the computer the work of calculations

mrboni, are you dimming or just On/Offing ?

17

Hi roman, founded thislink http://www.semageek.com/diy-construire-cube-de-512-led-contrl-par-arduino/

Its based on 5 STP16CP daisychainable
Sounds quite efficient

18

And http://www.instructables.com/id/Programmable-LED-Umbrella/

19

Thank you all so much for your answers! We decided (dl-110 and me) to use DMX. Because in your answers it semms like that Arduino is the more complex way. If we don’t get this to work, we will ask again! :)

20

@roman_g - glad you found a solution. What equipment have you decided on? And sorry for trying to hijack your thread :)

@karistouf - yes I’ll be dimming. Have found someone to design me a system based on these http://pdfserv.maxim-ic.com/en/ds/MAX6954.pdf controlled using an artnet to spi driver. We should be able to chain lots of these on the spi bus and it should be a really nice modular and expandable approach.

@sanch - I bought a couple of rainbowduino to have a play with but can’t program them for the life of me! Have tried using an arduino uno, and a usb>serial ttl cable. Neither of them worked. Did you have any trouble with this?

cheers guys