new IPAD / 3D camera / homemade LED matrix

During our holidays, my Acer Iconia Tab gave up …
Since I’m becomming more and more an Apple fan, I decided to replace it with a new IPAD 4 with retina display
(so, the large one, not the IPAD mini), 64 GB and Cellular/UMTS/GPRS/GPS module in it.

Also, we decided it was time to go “3D” with our pictures and movies. We can watch 3D movies
(our Epson beamer does support it, and our Mede8er mediaplayer also)
So, we bought a 3D Full HD camera, for filming and pictures (16 Mpixels).

I’m also busy for the moment, with creating a LED matrix.
For the moment, the LED matrix is about 64 x 32 pixels. (just as a start)
I noticed that I can accomplish a framerate higher then 125 FPS !
So, I will “enlarge” this display in the future. Next step will be 96×48 pixels.
And the final goal is to make it 128×64 pixels (about 1 meter x 0,5 meter)
The first included movie in this posting, has 500 frames for one rotation, and I even had to put a 5 mS wait-loop between each frame !
The LED matrix consists of 8×8 LED matrix modules with 5 mm LEDs.
(one module is about 6 x 6 cm) On the back of each module, there is a MAX7219 IC.
Every “row of modules”, does have its own connection the the ATxMega.
All data was put into the internal memory of the ATxMega.

In the second movie, there are 14 animations, all 250 frames per animation.
Animations are loaded from SD card, on the fly, while “showing” it on the LED matrix.
The whole cycle is about 45 seconds, so roughly,we have a framerate of about 75 FPS.
(and still some wait-loops inside the code, so 128×64 pixels may not be a problem)

Notice that you can also view our movies in 3D !
(I made the movie with our new 3D camera, and uploaded the original 3D footage (SBS) to youtube.
Ofcourse you can also watch it in plain format.
If you don’t have a 3D TV at home, but have some anaglyph glasses (green/blue, others also supported), please try it out !
(All our future movie uploads will also have this feature available)

There is also a 3D picture included in the picture-gallery of this topic 🙂


Click here to see first LED matrix movie
Click here to see LED matrix movie with more animations

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