This is the third post in the 16 X 16 Pixel RGB LED Artboard project, Part1 and Part2  links just in case you showed up late!

In this post I will discuss the building of a pine framed box to house the pixel array. It has a glass cover on the front for easy cleaning and finished look.

First part was cutting the frame pieces, used a miter box and hand saw to cut all four sides.

Next I carved out a groove for the glass, the location of the grooves was marked onto the wood with a pencil, square and metal ruler.

Then I used a small 1/4″ wood chisel to slowly carve out the groove to a depth of approximately 1/4″ deep. The glass was cut 1/2″ (13mm) larger on both sides than the wood frame. So a groove about 3/16″ to 1/4″ holds the glass in place and hides the edge.

Ok so that went fairly quickly, it was a lot of fun carving the wood. I love the smell of fresh cut wood.

Once I was totally satisfied with the fit, wood glue was applied to each joint and painters tape used to hold the sides in tension with each other.

The panel is held in place with offcuts from making the sides.

Right away I tested it out!!

And the first tests were successful!

This panel is power hunnngggry though!! The small bench power supply I used for this test immediately started to smell like burning electronics, so I shut it down… Need to find a 5V 4A power supply, 10A would be even better!

The pattern shown on the panel  is being fed via wifi to an ESP8266 mounted on the back of the panel. The ESP8266 is running an Artnet Node with two universes. I’m feeding the data from a windows PC running Jinx…. ive also tested it with GLEDiator as well and it works fine.

To be continued…. Programming, ESP8266, Artnet in the next post.