at second glance
the prototype
the prototype consists of 32 ultrabright LEDs in an aluminium casing controlled by an Arduino NG board and 8 shift registers, so that on the one hand only 3 output pins are needed, and on the other hand the length of the display can be easily extended by 8 LEDs per shift register. this way, even 64 or 128 LEDs can be used.
the LEDs are placed below a piece of milky white plexi glass serving as a diffuser, so the viewing angle is increased. square holes give the image a pixelated look.
long exposure shot taken while panning the camera
the image is stored in an array of long integers, the single bits are used to determine if a LED is on or off. an image (gif) of 32*32 pixels dimension can be loaded into a processing sketch which generates the numbers, that can then be copied into the arduino program and uploaded to the board.
