What is the cheapest, most effective way to get a programmable display for 160 characters, visible at 100ft?
May 6, 2012 8:26 AM Subscribe
What is the cheapest, most effective way to get a programmable display for 160 characters, visible at 100ft?
My goal is to be able to programmatically update a display. The display should be easily visible at night and during the day, ideally from a distance of, say, 100ft. 160 characters.
I'm not really quite sure what to look for beyond that. It will have to have some relatively standard hardware interface that I can use to control it, but I know little about this sort of technology.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
My goal is to be able to programmatically update a display. The display should be easily visible at night and during the day, ideally from a distance of, say, 100ft. 160 characters.
I'm not really quite sure what to look for beyond that. It will have to have some relatively standard hardware interface that I can use to control it, but I know little about this sort of technology.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
I'm a little unclear on what you're trying to do but a lot of TVs these days come with app engines Built in Samsungs are the most prevalent and easy to code. The apps are HTML based. So you could get a 40"+ Samsung and write a simple app loaded via dev tools to run on it pretty easily and everything runs in the tv itself. The tv is probably going to cost $800 or more though. My company writes apps for these TVs so you can memail me if you want more details on how these work.
posted by bitdamaged at 9:09 AM on May 6, 2012
posted by bitdamaged at 9:09 AM on May 6, 2012
You might want to think about the scale of this. If you go to this site you will see that the letters need to be a minimum of 4 inches and ideally 10 inches. Let's just compromise on 6 inches, half a foot, for simplicity.
This means that if you have four rows of 40 characters, you need a display that is a minimum of 20 feet by 2 feet, not even including spacing between letters. This is jumbotron or high school scoreboard sizing and is going to be very expensive.
posted by JackFlash at 11:05 AM on May 6, 2012
This means that if you have four rows of 40 characters, you need a display that is a minimum of 20 feet by 2 feet, not even including spacing between letters. This is jumbotron or high school scoreboard sizing and is going to be very expensive.
posted by JackFlash at 11:05 AM on May 6, 2012
We need a few more details. Is it temporary or permanent? Indoors or out? Will there be someone to keep an eye on it, or is it unattended?
posted by Marky at 12:34 PM on May 6, 2012
posted by Marky at 12:34 PM on May 6, 2012
Big LED signs (like the ones used on storefronts and the like) are often controllable over a serial line or ethernet, so I think they'd do what you want, but I have no idea what they cost.
posted by hattifattener at 1:31 PM on May 6, 2012
posted by hattifattener at 1:31 PM on May 6, 2012
Response by poster: Answers...
What I want to do: display characters outside of my room window that people on the street can read
Indoor or out: just inside my window, so indoors
Temporary or permanent: well, it's in my room, so I will control it...I'd like it to be able to stay up for a while, but it doesn't need to be battle hardened or anything
Attended or unattended: kind of the same answer as above...it'd probably run a bit while I wasn't home, but it'd be in my room
posted by wooh at 5:06 PM on May 6, 2012
What I want to do: display characters outside of my room window that people on the street can read
Indoor or out: just inside my window, so indoors
Temporary or permanent: well, it's in my room, so I will control it...I'd like it to be able to stay up for a while, but it doesn't need to be battle hardened or anything
Attended or unattended: kind of the same answer as above...it'd probably run a bit while I wasn't home, but it'd be in my room
posted by wooh at 5:06 PM on May 6, 2012
A projector and a white sheet - How cheap of a projector would work at night depends on your exterior light levels - most of the toy projectors aimed at children (Wonderwall, EyeClops, etc ) could be hacked into operating in the appropriate range, and they're under $50 new. Daytime visibility is going to be much more.
posted by Orb2069 at 7:14 PM on May 6, 2012
posted by Orb2069 at 7:14 PM on May 6, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
My first thought was, well, you might need to build something out of smaller serial LCD displays. My second was, well, you could pick up a handful of low-end monitors and just drive them with a PC...
posted by brennen at 9:04 AM on May 6, 2012