SparkFun Forums

[SparkDrum]

Hello All,

I am in the process of designing a light system for a competitive indoor drumline show. The props are 20 inch cubes with an 8x8 RGB LED Matrix on the front of each cube, and there will be 32 of them used for the show. They will be carried individually, stacked, moved etc. What I ultimately aspire to do is have a system that is fully controlled by one computer, has a range of 100 ft, and is very accurate with timing (again, drummers, so things have to be happening at the right time.) I only need to send data from the computer TO the boxes, no data needs to get back to the computer, so I'm open there.

So far, I have adapted Kevin Darrah's 8x8x8 RGB LED Cube down to an array of 8x8, which I am currently driving with Shift Registers, and then Transistors, using an Arduino Uno. Eventually, I will need to reduce this to a standalone ATMega or other inexpensive microcontroller.

My next phase is to design a wireless setup that allows me to control all 32 of the prop boxes at once, as fast as possible. I have been researching Xbee and Bluetooth, but have not found anything within my price range.

Can RF be used if there are 32 independent signals?

How do I ensure that the instructions will be timed accurately, when each of the boxes must remain a separate system? No wires can be going between them for a clock signal, i.e.

Is Serial communication going to be fast enough to communicate to all of them? Imagine a wireless 8x8x32 LED column...

I have to remain inexpensive, as there will be 32 of each of whatever I buy.

Any help is much appreciated. Doing as much research on my own, but thought I would reach out here for help. Thanks a bunch.


SparkDrum
I

[Mee_n_Mac]

What information needs to go to each box, all 64 bits all the time or will each box only ever display some subset of every possible 8x8 LED pattern ? How often must each box respond, are we talking about every 50 msec or every 500 msec ? Have you looked into what software will be used the choreograph and control the boxes (Vixen, ??). Do you have a video of a representative performance ? It helps to see what the end result is supposed to be.

FWIW I thought Xbees could broadcast if you disabled the acknowledge and resend functions. But first you need to determine your datarate and latency requirements.