I'm Building the Best LED Wall on the Internet

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In this video I explain the steps I took designing the next version of my DIY LED Wall. It’s basically an Arduino LED Matrix but massive. I use ws2812b LEDs and an ESP-32 microcontroller programmed with the Arduino IDE. If you’re new to hardware design or embedded systems programming, then this project is the perfect way to learn while building something fun!
Get Started with your own PCB design for free at easyeda.com/
All the files you need to replicate this are available on my GitHub:
github.com/TechRandom/NeoMatr...
Parts used:
LED Matrix Tiles (Amazon) - amzn.to/3UHX65y
LED Matrix Tiles (AliExpress) - s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dcy...
ESP32-S3 - amzn.to/4a4Iodn
Best Affordable 3D Printer - amzn.to/3KiTst6
Using these affiliate links supports the channel at no extra cost to you!

[@TheTechRandom]

Let me know if you have any suggestions for the next revision. I'm trying to make this project as approachable as possible so you guys can build one too!

[@jamesanderegg7655]

Can you share your PCB board or do you recommend we create our own? That would be the hardest part for me.

[@TheTechRandom]

PCB files are available on my GitHub linked in the description!

[@mayukhbari]

Slap on some good quality 1mm polycarbonate diffuser rather than 3d printing this not so looking good diffuser

[@TekWit]

As you have one esp32s3 per ´panel’ I would use 6pins for // outputs so you can have a correct refresh speed. Otherwise I think any animation will be too slow.

[@TheTechRandom]

The refresh rate is pretty great as is. The bottleneck for this project will be the speed at which I can propagate the data between the panels when I have all 16. The esp32 has two cores so I’m going to use one to constantly receive and send data, and the other will be updating the pixels at around 30 fps.

[@id104335409]

I'll be watching when the led wall finally evolves into a TV.

[@wanderingrock6756]

I could hear it now, Todd Howard walks out on stage with you to reveal the new LED wall "16 TIMES THE DETAIL" and with the coding went. "It just works"

[@markc.5750]

😂

[@user-cz2pw4zv4e]

One rule of thumb for video walls: the optimal viewing distance is roughly the millimeter LED spacing switched to meters. A 5mm pixel spacing is best viewed from 5 Meters or more. Super cheap Hub75 panel LED spacing as low as 1.87mm are available (for less than 1 cent an LED)

[@theSquashSH]

I built a portable version that's similar to your design, but without the diffuser. It's modular tiles with a bay for 3 18650 batteries on the back, USB-C charging, daisy chaining, and an ESP-32. I can share the Onshape files if you want! I experimented with both the 5v and 12v ones and ended up going with 12v so I could chain more together before injecting more power.

[@ianmilham7397]

For the black diffuser, there’s a material called Black LED acrylic. It has a really nice matte black finish that looks great with no lighting, but let’s like color through very well. Chris Maher has done a few LED projects with it.

[@ryanstiles1934]

If you increase the brightness just slightly on the pixels on the edges that connect to other tiles it will help camouflage the gaps. That's what video wall displays do. I really like this project and it looks great. It's super weird that we are now to the point where it's hard to justify projects like this when we can buy screens this size that will probably cost less money in the end. Obviously, that isn't the point, but my frugal side keeps screaming at me when I start considering it.

[@BrockGunterSmith]

Oh well played, well played! ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW??? Step 1: Produce a wickedly good and informative video; Step 2: LEAVE US HANGING!; 😂 Seriously though, I really appreciate the incredible effort put into making this video and the project itself. You and a very small number of other YT channels are REALLY making me excited for my kids’ futures. By that I mean, they have some amazing opportunities to learn anything and everything they could ever want to, and be inspired by experts from all around the world, unlike has ever been possible in human history. Keep up the great work 👍

[@peterxyz3541]

Yes! Thank you! I need this!!!

[@chefsas80]

Can't wait to see the big wall!

[@dizzybro]

Really neat project!

[@schumzy]

I'm working on same issue of scaling bigger. Already using neo-pixel, so can't wait to see your solution

[@parkerbenz]

I know the sponsor was JLC PCB, but ive used them a few times before and they really are the bees knees. I really want to make my own led wall now though lol

[@TheTechRandom]

I’ve gotten sponsor requests from other PCB manufacturers and they’ve even offered more money, but JLC is genuinely my favorite. They make complex hardware seem so simple

[@markm04021979]

Nice!! You’re doing the same as i’m doing and i was inspired by your previous video about the led wall. I’ve used Wled and an esp32 to setup 6 modules. When installing look carefully for the corner without a dot under the led. That helps with the rotation. And i’ve made a really thin grid to go over the leds and i’ve made the first few layers in white. I’ll add some pictures later. Keep it up!

[@rudyplayz20]

I love the use of Good Kid as your outro!

[@samueljoseph5029]

Awesome work bro.

[@CraigHollabaugh]

Hey, I've been designing PCBs for 30 yrs and there's always some screw up. Don't sweat it. Fortunately, PCB production cost has dropped to near zero and companies like JLC make it so easy. I also don't mind you using the auto router for circuits at your designs' speeds. Keep up the great work on this awesome project. The stuff you're learning here, and showing us, will help with all your future projects. Thanks for the video.

[@B0A2]

You may want to look into making a pcb for the led panel as well

[@hebe1792]

Cool project. I want to make one similar at some point. For the diffuser, get some clear acrylic or plexiglass and run an orbital sander with 480 or finer grid thru one of the surfaces.

[@VideoGuy9461]

3:18 "Will take you directly to jail..."

[@Comrade_YG]

Jail see pee see 🐝

[@GhostlyHax]

Have you thought about using WLED?It has a lot of support for different lighting programs and tons of custom effects, pretty sure you can easily sync up multiple panels as well with different esp chips. Im interested to know if you've considered it because I've been using it to drive my one panel and I want to make more

[@TheTechRandom]

I’ve used WLED for small matrices and all of the lights in my house. The effects are great as well as the controls, but for this project I want to specifically mirror a PC display so that’s why I’m doing it this way instead!

[@watchvideos9104]

Full wall definition is going to be great and readable

[@JoshuaJoshua0]

Looking forward to seeing the end product. I'm still learning. Is there a reason you didn't use WLED for this? It can do what you need, right?

[@TheTechRandom]

WLED doesn’t support screen mirroring but there are many other advantages to it. I want this project to be scalable for as many applications as possible so screen mirroring is an important part of that.

[@WindLighter]

I whould like to see your reasons of chosing ESP for this project. Foe rxample, when I started a bit of similar project (unfortunatelly it took no significant traction online), I had ARM, STM and Raspbery as main options and ESP caught my attention later, when main features of the project was mostly designed. But I desided to still use STM32 as it had the most nomber of pins to arrange LEDs in parallel getting faster FPS, and also there was a lot of pins left to add most of extra functionality and expandability

[@TheTechRandom]

I chose the ESP32-S3 specifically because it has dual cores so it can handle the amount of data it will need to process to achieve a decent frame rate but also its programmable through the Arduino IDE making it approachable for most hobbyists who may want to try a project like this on their own!

[@WindLighter]

@@TheTechRandom first point is valid, as generating frames on the fly is way faster than, for example, reading data from SD card (it can take up to 5 ms for 4k points), but peak framerate is also limited by speed of LED data transfer - I believe that was the reason that some listings or darasheets state that maximum LEDs per line is 2 or 4k (though tere is no actual limit). but the Arduino IDE is still a method to program a controller so you still need to deal with coding at mid and low level and to interface different libraries with each other. It's no big deal if you're an engineer or at least coding hobbyist. But what I can see, a lot of hobbyists who specialise on practical skills like cosplay, crafting, making miniatures and so on are not good enough to be abe to code and prefer using ready-made devices. Does your approach allow a workflow like step 1 - download a program that casts something to your device, step 2 - buy a ESP32, step 3 - download a program that flashes your code to ESP32, step 4 - connect ESP to PC through USB, and flash it, step 5 - done? Or even better - buy online preprogramed device and download a program to cast something there - and start using it?

[@TheTechRandom]

@WindLighter I would love to sell these as a pre-programmed product someday but right now that’s outside of my scope. For now I will be keeping the project open source so someone can simply buy the hardware and install my pre-written code. Anyone attempting this will still need the basic knowledge of soldering and 3D printing as well as setting up the Arduino IDE but all of those things can be learned for free on KZbin already so I don’t go into the details. I am planning smaller projects for the future that will be more practical to sell and ship from my own store but we’ll see how it goes.

[@Darkblitz9]

Looks great! The auto vinyl is a great option and for removing the grid lines it should be as simple as making sure to only print 2/4 of the edges (with exceptions for tiles on the edge of the entire wall). I'm a Bottom-Left edge kind of guy. I do think printing the actual tiles in a different color may help as well. Black give a bit of a screen-door effect, and white might be too reflective. Perhaps experiment with some differing colors? A shade of gray might end with the best results. Can't wait to see the results!

[@bassstorm89]

So I have had great success with a similar project with LED Matrix panels with HUB75 connectors and using hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix on a raspberry pi 4 and some openCV to consume a NDI stream and output it via the library. Might be worth it to check that out!

[@red40...]

fahrenheit 451 parlor walls irl. Jokes aside this is awesome!

[@zsavage1820]

I have 4 8x32 matix panels and they are wifi and also on my PC I have Signal RGB which sees them and all my lights in and out of the PC run in sync...can also mirror PC screen

[@4sIElectronics]

Cool project, I would recommend parallel driving the panels, for higher refresh rate (you will want this if you want to achieve good low brightness color performance using temporal dithering.) FastLED (and when I was doing my project neither did NEOPIXEL) doesn't currently support esp32 S3 parralel driving, but there is piece of code that utilizes the I2S driver of the chip to parralel driver up to 16 channels.

[@WindLighter]

that was one of the reasons for making a project from the ground with another controller since in STM32 architecture it's easy to make 8 or 16 channels from the start with simple DMA setup

[@thelastengineer8633]

the ali express site is not available ....would it work with WLED?

[@BrokenCircuitRanch]

why not use the 64x64 matrix in a P5 or smaller pixel size? they are about the same price per sq inch. hard to change now, but why the small matix?

[@MadComputerScientist]

What about window screen / shade cloth?

Try streaming the data with ESP-now.

[@Drdstl-ie1vk]

I would try this matrix with the Wled software

[@B0A2]

Have you tried doing a white diffusor instead of a black diffusor? I've had some success doing that with by bambu labs printer with ams

[@TheTechRandom]

My current wall uses a white diffuser and it works, but from my experience the darker colors don’t look as good. With the black diffuser I get a lot more contrast but the screen is less bright. It’s a trade-off that I’m trying to balance.

[@B0A2]

@@TheTechRandom Good stuff just wanted to put the idea out there

[@technoch33s3c4k3]

Really is a homemade video wall. Next youll be cloning the carbon cb5s. My favourite video wall if anyone is wondering.

[@CoryAlbrecht]

Should've gone with HUB75 panels if you wanted better resolution. 😉

[@teddykim1107]

Not understanding that you did this with ws28xx series .... it would be much better with hub75 led matrix

[@TheTechRandom]

Price mostly but I also like the pixel aesthetic. P3 or P2 panels will happen eventually if I can make the money back.

[@teddykim1107]

@@TheTechRandom Thank for reply. I am doing my project, raspberry pi 3 and matrix led. If that looks okay, I will just share with short video although that might be lame cuz it is quite old and nothing new.

[@nate_d376]

Nice!

[@Amunz0r]

Can you release the original 3D files for modifications? It would make it so people could remix it easily for different size tiles.

[@TheTechRandom]

The files are available through onshape but it can be a mess trying to find them there so I’ll add them to my Git repo

[@Amunz0r]

@@TheTechRandom Can't wait. Thanks!

[@TheTechRandom]

cad.onshape.com/documents/0b75d8a92eaed112abe058e4/w/ae56d212076a93f52d54f4f5/e/923ae6ff45cf32c0e0cd9106?renderMode=0&uiState=663526a8ddded813a2aa8592

[@nyeleskettes]

What is the point? LED matrixes are readily available in any format and pixelcount stackable so you could cover a wall from 1/10 of the price. Nothing in them is challenging except how you map your image to the panel pixels.

[@g.s.3389]

I used the same tiles for a picture 2x2 tiles using WLED. I love it even if my wife wants to take it off the wall :)

[@fel_cro4801]

Can i Power my esp32 With 5v 30a?

[@TheTechRandom]

If it’s a dev kit then yes. If you’re making your own board you’ll need to step the 5V down to 3.3V with a linear regulator. The 30 amps is the maximum rated current for your supply and not the amount of current that the board will actually receive.

[@djdj101010]

Why not p4 panels?

[@ACTIONDANhero]

cool room, full of more colors than willy wonkas chocolate factory

[@thelastengineer8633]

7:12 u should have made the walls between the tiles half the thickness

[@snoobabs1]

Just buy a TV bro 😂 (But well done! Very cool project 👍🏻)

[@OnnieKoski]

Turn a room in your house into a Volume!

[@nuiipointer]

what about using a beamer

[@illich1010]

Try night driver, it's wled big brother

[@IIlIIllII]

Remember repairability, a dead pixel Will happen, but yeah yeah, you already know that.

[@TheTechRandom]

Oh yeah I had three dead pixels I've had to repair already. Definitely something I need to improve going forward.

[@SPVCEMVNMUSIC]

"led video wall" is the same thing but way more dense leds...🤔

[@adrianscarlett]

I'm waiting for 2mm pitch led panels or below to become cheap. Ideally, 1 mm pitch.

[@Zuluknob]

Just buy an old 75" tv

[@TylerTimoJ]

Too bad that software doesn't have any documentation...

[@remainsmemories626]

Lol I recently got advertisment 0.7*2m MicroLED wall for free, so mine is cheaper and higher resolution))) But seriously, nice build, good video!

[@rayshishkoff]

Maybe you knew this already, but the part where the bytes were being ordered differently is called the "endianness". Some systems are little endian with the "lowest byte" and others are big endian when they store/send/receive data. Depending on the platform you're using, you may be able to find a more efficient way (e.g. some hardware-based call / byteswap library) to fix that problem if you're looking for a way to speed it up down the line.

[@Tiryk]

You're in another league bro! Great work as always!

[@ikcinbeatz4365]

You look like Jimmy's lil brother.

[@TeddyR_Official]

Just use P5 panels.

[@raffy141]

16 times the Details

[@gsestream]

why are people not using cat5/6 ethernet cable for the signals. jailpcb, ie forced human labour, for money's payment sake.

[@CYYB3RMISTER]

Ill just sit here and wait for you to do all the heavy lifting and then copy your homework and build by own.

[@MrLexhoya]

This result is already great! I would suggest looking at Bitluni how he did this with his large scale LED wall.

[@OOTheBlueAir]

your problem is , viewing quality . nice work,. quality not great.

These subtitles just gave me a headache

[@skmgeek]

Btw, it's pronounced "nya-n" cat (as in, the japanese cat meow onomatopoeia), not "nie-ann" :3

[@deadadam666]

um each one of them led fpcb's is like 17 dollars , literally cheaper to plaster your wall with actual displays

[@TheTechRandom]

I got 100 for $500 by bulk ordering on Ali express. The amazon listings are more expensive since they only let you order one or two at a time

[@chrism6880]

For $500 you could just buy a cheap led tv...

[@TheTechRandom]

See my last video haha

[@chrism6880]

@@TheTechRandom 🤔🤔🤔 Nah

[@marcel9568]

Man you talk fast... very tiring to listen to. Stopped watching the video after 2 minutes, or 75000 words.

[@foxxify1]

I watched it it 2x speed. We are not the same.

[@mallorymedia6440]

Move on then

[@mattadams7660]

I watch everything at 2x on phone 3x on the computer. At 3x I heard every word.

[@jordyandrews]

skill issue

[@MrAjw312]

Not everything is at your pace...