LowDef TV

[53-11]

I had a bunch of SPI LED strips left over from Halloween so I made a LowDef TV out of them.

I took 20meters of 30LED/m strips and made a LowDef Smart TV. I arranged them into a 32x18 grid on a 4' x 2' piece of plywood. I had to add a 1.5" air gap and piece of white cloth to defocus the LEDs. They zip-zagged back and forth in a 576 LED chain.

LowDef 1.jpg (59.52 KiB) Viewed 467 times

Wired them into a Raspberry Pi board using a cut&jumpered version of the Adafruit RGBMatrix board. This seemed like the easiest way to bump the 3.3v to 5v needed to drive the LEDs. I just needed to jumper the SPI CLK & MOSI lines to the level shifters.

I also added an audio amp and a reasonable set speakers.

LowDef 2a.jpg (61.21 KiB) Viewed 467 times

Using dispmanx API the application grabs the GPU output, downscales the image, gamma correct the colors, tweaks the output format, and sends the buffer out the SPI port.

Running Kodi on the LowDef display is a little tough to navigate using the default skin, but the web & remote interface works. I've been enjoying streaming Youtube music video playlists to it.

LowDef 3.jpg (52.59 KiB) Viewed 467 times

[gregeric]

That's neat! Nicely done hardware & software