It was sick and tired of discourteous drivers on the highway, so he decided that he would put together a led car display to let them know what he thought of their poor driving skills. He planned on putting the led car display up in the rear window of his car, so he had to ensure that it did not obstruct his view while driving.
He decided that an LED matrix would be the best way for displaying images and text while on the go, so he got busy constructing a 40×16 mesh grid for his rear window. Using a wooden template to get the spacing and positioning just right, he spent several days soldering the 600+ LEDs to one another. He used 74HC595 shift registers to manage the LEDs in groups of 5 columns, while an ATmega AT89C51 was tasked with generating the text and images to be displayed. All of the ICs were deadbugged in place, helping achieve his desire of keeping his view unobstructed.
While we’re not well-versed on the legality of such a led car display, it looks great when animated. There are plenty of pictures of the grid in various stages of construction as well as videos of it in action in his Picasa album, so be sure to check them out. If you are looking for code or Eagle files, you can find those here.
This article comes from hackaday edit released