Arduino Goes to Town, Part 3.

256 Neopixels on the front instead of the VU-meters. I am aware that it might end up like a carnival instead of the sophisticated 70th look I was initially going for. The hole in the front panel was made as big as possible given the constraints of the cabinet. It ended up being the somewhat odd dimension of 39 x 8 cm. Eight centimetres height works perfectly for the Longruner WS2812B 8x32 Matrix but it is only 32 cm wide. So I had to come up with a design that would somehow fill the 3.5 cm gap on each side of the panel. Another problem was diffusing the LEDs somehow.

I ended up with the idea to print a "box" too mount the strip to and make it deep enough to be able to diffuse the LEDS with a piece of 3mm Opal acrylic sheet. I printed the box in three sections pieced together with dove tail joints and pure friction (no glue needed).

I made the edges slanted in hope of filling the gaps with light.

I printed holes in the back of one of the ends for the cables and I also secured them with cable ties.

 And this is what it looks like with the LED strip mounted in the bottom of the box.

And finally with the Opal acrylic sheet on top.

The opal glass is doing a great job diffusing the individual LEDs but the image lack definition.

I therefor decided to print a raster. It was also made out of three different sections.

Glued togehter into one piece (using cyanoacrylate based glue)...

Put on top of the LED strip (note how the raster allows the light from the final column to "fill the gap").

Finally, Opal acrylic on top and light diffused into a set of well defined "pixels".

With a panel to render the spectrum analyser its time to move on with the implementation, stay tuned.