At Hive13 we have a 5′ × 5′ glass block wall/window in our space and the first thing we thought of when we saw it was a 7 × 8 pixel grid.

We want to build a programmable full color, lo-res display using RGB LEDs.

To do this we obivously need LEDs – lots of LEDs. The brighter the better.

We could use these nice ShiftBrite modules, but we’d really rather go all out and get the ShiftBrite’s big brother – the MegaBrite.

ShiftBrites are about $3.50 each and MegaBrites are about $7.75 each. And we need 56 of them. We’ll also need some cabling to connect them all up. The cables are about $1.50 each too. Finally, we’ll need a a good power supply to power it all; that could be as much as $100.

So,

($3.50 + $1.50) * 56 = $280

($7.75 + $1.50) * 56 = $518

All told, we’re going to need somewhere between $300 – $700 to do this. We’re shooting for $400 here. If we go over and get to $700, awesome. If we only get to $300, we’ll make do. Any funds raised here, but not used, will go directly to the Hive13 general fund.

Here’s the stuff on our shopping list:

ShiftBrites:
http://macetech.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=1

MegaBrites:
http://macetech.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=9

Cables:
http://macetech.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=3

Here’s the project page with our progress and prototypes so far:
http://wiki.hive13.org/Glass_Block_LED_Matrix