LED Matrix

Delptronics has built several LED projects for our customers (see design services). Building on that experience, we created a large 60x32 LED Matrix. The Matrix was actually under construction live during SXSW Create 2016. We powered it up on the last day of Create, and it worked! The picture to the right was taken right after it came alive.

We are certainly not the first people to think of using addressable LED strips (sometimes called Neopixels) to create a display. However, most of the existing projects use the display as a simple sign, slide show viewer, or low-res video wall. We wanted to do something more interactive.

To that end, we wrote a game engine specifically for the Matrix. We then solicited programmers and game designers to create games targeting the Matrix. We wrote an emulator for the LED Matrix in the Processing environment so that developers could write games for it on their own computers without needing to have an actual LED Matrix. The end result of that project was six amazing low res games.

For full details on the LED Matrix, read Mickey's blog article.

The LED Matrix has been exhibited at:

• SXSW Create (March 11-13, 2016)
• Austin Maker Faire (May 7-8, 2016)
• Classic Game Fest (July 30-31, 2016)
• Juegos Rancheros (September 1, 2016)
• Fantastic Arcade (September 26-30, 2016)
• EFF Austin (March 11, 2017)
• HavenCon 3 (April 20-30, 2017)
• Maker Faire Popup at the Bullock Texas State History Museum's exhibit "Pong to Pokémon: The Evolution of Electronic Gaming" (December 28-30, 2017)
• Austin Maker Faire Mixer (February 15, 2018)
• San Antonio Mini Maker Faire (March 24, 2018)
• Various events, concerts, and music festivals around Austin, TX

At Fantastic Arcade 2016, Mickey Delp participated in a panel on "Making Games on Weird Hardware".
Here is the video: