Hi all Arduingineers,
I Want to build a large RGB LED display board (4ft x 3ft) and play small video clips using my arduino uno, and yes I have no idea about electronics. Please Help Me With Details.
First, have you picked what LED strips you want to use, and second do you want to eventually have HDMI input?
What density of LEDs do want?
Example: Neopixels and Dotstars are integrated controller/RGB LED from Adafruit that are available in strips, pre-built matrix, rings, single LEDs. etc.
The more you use, the bigger the 5V power supply you will need (0.06A/RGB LED needed at full white).
Dotstar would best for high speed updates, it uses separate clock & data pins so SPI speeds (8 MHz) can be used. Neopixel (WS2812B) is limited to 800 KHz I believe.
Are you converting the video clips to SD card format for the Arduino to read and send out to the display?
The Arduino doesn't have lots of memory for video or lots of processing power, although you can add and SDcard shield for more memory.
How much resolution do you need? (How many LEDs?)
What kind of video? Do you have any idea about the size of your video files, or are you going to generate animation on-the-fly?
Uncompressed video requires lots of storage and the Arduino won't be able to decompress or play any of the normal compressed formats. (Plus, you'd have to scale-down the resolution anyway because you can't wire-up enough LEDs for anything close to "normal" video resolution.)
This could involve LOTS of wiring, although LED strips would help. I made a project where I hand-wired 48 LEDs and it seems like it "took forever"... That's 96 heat-shrunk solder connections and if they had been RGB LEDs it would have been 192 connections.
and yes I have no idea about electronics.
Have you done any programming?
...Maybe just get a large TV and use your computer or a Raspberry Pi.