Slack-Enabled Office Jumbotron Constructed From 48 LED Panels

After moving into a new office, Phil and company needed to decorate. While a 3D-printed model of their logo or plants (which they seem to have also acquired) would be nice touches, they decided to build a huge LED matrix wall — or a small Jumbotron depending on how you look at it.

The device stands at 2 meters wide by 1.2 meters tall, or 78 by 47 inches if you so prefer. In traditional TV terms, this works out to a 2.33m, or 92-inch diagonal display. Though I’m sure they are out there, try finding a TV that big at your local Best Buy. It uses 48 panels stacked together on a metallic frame, giving it a 384 x 256 resolution. That’s not exactly HD, but when you consider that this is 98,304 individual LEDs being addressed, the scale of the project becomes much more impressive!

What’s also impressive — and a little frightening — is that this monster is powered by three 5V, 60amp transformers. That’s 180 amps for those keeping score at home. Along with electrical power needs, computing power was a challenge as well. A Raspberry Pi 3 was initially pressed into use for control, but once more than ~28 panels were stacked together, performance began to suffer greatly. While one has to wonder how a Pi 4 would fare, they instead turned a professional setup in the form of LED sender and receiver cards.

These cards, a Linsn TS802 sender and Linsn RV908T receiver, are able to handle the setup with no problem, and after some configuration content is now fed to the Jumbotron via a Mac Mini and custom app. This allows it to play a variety of videos, photos, and gifs, and you can even DM it content on Slack if you so choose!