5/17/2023 0 Comments Screen lights![]() ![]() Here is the unfinished backside of one of the panels. We also made sure to use a few strips of electrical tape across the rows of staples on the back of each panel to add some slight padding and hopefully prevent the staples from scratching the garage door once mounted. That said, the staples are more than sufficient to hold everything in place and are relatively easy to remove if needed to swap out bad pixels in the future. Dealing with the extra wire between pixels and the forces it produced on the pixels when it was bunched up definitely increased the challenge of assembling the panels. If we had been able to get the exact wire lengths we needed (or something very close), this process would have been easier. To be honest, this process was fairly miserable but it did work well and the pixels are securely attached to the panel. We used an electric staple gun with 1/2″ deep staples and then bent over the back of each staple by hand (using a small block of wood to get leverage). ![]() ![]() Each panel contains 8 rows of pixels and all connectors for control or power injection come off the right side side of the panel.Įvery pixel is held in place by 2 staples across the wires, one on each side of the pixel body. The overall pixel grid is 38 pixels wide by 16 pixels high and the pixels are spaced at 2.5 inches on center in both horizontal and vertical directions. This stuff is strong, thin, and very lightweight and serves as a good backer material for attaching the pixels. In keeping with the lightweight and thin requirements, we picked up some relatively inexpensive corrugated plastic sheeting from Home Depot. See LED Pixels for more details on all of the LEDs used in our show. Unfortunately, ~2 inches was the shortest length that could be manufactured and so we made it work. We ended up with 1 7/8 inch long wires (pixels 3 3/8 inches apart on center), but would have preferred 1 inch long wires instead as it would have made mounting the pixels much, much easier. We ordered 12V ws2811 technicolor pixels and had them built with a smaller-than-standard wire length since they would be mounted close together. However, there was still enough room for the square bodies of the technicolor pixels that we use all over the house façade and roof and we know that these pixels are much more robust and reliable than the pixel strips we tried for the seven-segment displays. The Pixelsĭue to the low clearance between the garage door and the upper door jamb, we knew that our solution had to be pretty thin. You can also see a hint of the orange strapping holding the light panels onto the garage door panels. After the season, we will staple that pixel down like all the others. You can see one pixel in the fourth row of the top panel near the right side that we had to replace and it is just held on with white electrical tape temporarily. The LED pixel screen in the daytime with the wiring harness on the right side. The resolution isn’t TV-like, but we can certainly render numbers, letters, and many images. A close up of the pixel screen showing some ships sailing across. This new screen is a major improvement over the seven-segment displays we used on the garage door previously. The LED pixel screen (new in 2020) showing a Christmas message. The pixel screen consists of 608 pixels in a 38 x 16 grid that spans roughly 8 feet wide by 3.5 feet tall. The pixel screen is a significant improvement in both functionality and (we believe) in durability over our original attempts at garage door illumination. We created the pixel screen in 2020 to replace the Garage Door Seven-Segment Display we originally built in 2017. ![]()
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