Dot Matrix
2022-08-17

I wanted to do a fun and interesting team building event for the remote team I managed, so I made this project for everyone to build a wifi-enabled LED matrix display. It only requires two parts:

Both of these could easily be sourced from Amazon and shipped directly to each team member's home. The LED matrix displays we ordered also conveniently included jumper wires that could be used to connect directly to the microcontroller board, so no special tools or soldering were required.

When everyone had received the parts, we got together on a video call and I gave a quick introduction to electronics and microcontrollers, walked through how to connect the parts, taught some basic Arduino microcontroller programming, and had everyone flash a firmware program I had written to enable you to connect to the microcontroller over wifi and send it text, which would then scroll across the display.

No one on the team had any prior electronics or microcontroller experience, but by the end of the hour everyone had successfully assembled and programmed a working LED matrix project. I also later designed a snap-together 3d-printed enclosure for the microcontroller and LED matrix, which I printed copies of and sent to everyone afterwards.

Dot matrix control web app

If you'd like to try this project out yourself or for your team, instructions, code, and model files for the 3d printed enclosure are available on the project page here: https://github.com/esp1/dot-matrix.