Does anyone plan to build the new marquee. I must admit I'm intrigued by the concept. However, I don't know if I want to tie up 5 micro-controllers, a ton of LED's, yards of wire, and several build days to make a big sign like that. I'm still up in the air.

My wife may start looking at me even more strangely if I begin building a sign that would go across my wall.... I could hear her now saying ... "Why" :D

Granted it does have the cool factor going.

So I pose the following questions. To all my fellow NerdKit owners ...

1. Have you built the original marquee display?
2. Do you plan to build the new supersize display?

Just curious what the group thinks...

Rick

I've built the original marquee and I really enjoyed it. That being said, I can't see myself building any more of these. I am really interested in the concept covered in the video, though. I've been kicking some ideas around lately and being able to control other MCUs will come in handy I think.

Rick, I have built the LED Array. My hope is to build one that is only two "MCUs" big. I looked over the code quickly & it looks like the only thing you would have to change when changing the number of MCUs is one variable. 40 x 5 seems a bit more palatable.

I do agree with FWSquatch that the idea of multiple MCUs in a master/slave relationship is intriguing. I've been toying around with using an MCUs with more I/O pins but don't want to stray too far from the 168/328.

Chris B. n3ueaEMTP

I guess my biggest thought on this is that it seems all we are doing is turning a powerful mcu into a fancy shift register. I know it's doing a bit more but with a different layout on the marquee (keep all diodes in one direction) 1 mcu with a series of shift registers could do the same job (for less money in parts).

My second thought is do we really need the power of the 168 or could mega8's be used for the "slave" controllers?

I'm really still on the fence about building another marquee but if I do, I may try going out on my own to see if I can figure out how to do it with a single mcu.

Thanks everyone so far for your responses... Any others??

Rick