Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy disc?

[kurtyboy]

I've done lots of work modifying the plastic toy and am now looking for a suitable USB programmable LED driver.

I think 64 LEDs would be a nice number (16 for the inner C, 4 for the projectors and 44 for the blade) and (only if possible) with a variable voltage for a glowing effect. And it would need to be pretty small, probably about 3cm x 5cm.

I know nothing about electronics so can the experts tell me, does such a thing exit?

 

[kurtyboy]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Nobody knows anything about LED drivers?

 

[TridCloudwalker]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

I'm eventually going to be putting one together from an Arduino board with screen-accurate animation. It'd be very easy to just copy the programming onto another board. It may not be an actual Arduino, but one of the newer open source boards, as they can handle more LEDs (i'm thinking 74ish for an accurate look). My brother (the electronics guru) is looking into options right now.

 

[Darkside]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

there are many step down led driver

the best would be the arduino nano way to controll them over pwm

then just control the led driver with the board.

if you want to controll single leds the rainbowduino could be better but needs to be improved in the size.

 

[kurtyboy]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Please keep us informed!

I'm eventually going to be putting one together from an Arduino board with screen-accurate animation. It'd be very easy to just copy the programming onto another board. It may not be an actual Arduino, but one of the newer open source boards, as they can handle more LEDs (i'm thinking 74ish for an accurate look). My brother (the electronics guru) is looking into options right now.

 

[kurtyboy]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Has anyone done this yet that wants to share what they used?

 

[nullset]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Can you provide an example of what it's supposed to look like and do?

Video link? I can help you out if you can tell me what you want/need.

--buddy

 

[exoray]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

kurtyboy it's certainly possible, the 3cm x 5cm space is plenty to make it happen... Driving 60, 70 or 80 LEDs is elementary in the end it mostly boils down to how efficient you want to make the circuit while it drives those LEDs...

I have no idea what effect you are looking for or what the disc looks like as I have not looked into it at all or even seen the movie, when you say glowing effect, do you want the LEDs to slightly pulse randomly or what?

 

[kurtyboy]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Something similar to what Propmaster2000 did:
YouTube - ‪TRON IDENTITY Disc Prop - LED lighting test 1‬‏

Can you provide an example of what it's supposed to look like and do?

Video link? I can help you out if you can tell me what you want/need.

--buddy

 

[who45]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

that youtube vids aweome - id buy one if it came pre built like that - hint hint guys

 

[exoray]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Something similar to what Propmaster2000 did:
YouTube - ‪TRON IDENTITY Disc Prop - LED lighting test 1‬‏

That's easy enough to do, the hardest part will be installing all the LEDs...

Again I'm totally newb to the new Tron, what toy version are you looking to fit this in, I see there are two versions...

 

[nullset]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

You might want to start reading here: led hacks - Hack a Day

You can probably find something close to what you want, or at least learn something so you have a better idea of where to start.

--buddy

 

[Fluxcapacitor]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Not to hijack the thread or anything but I am actually working on a circuit to be screen accurate to the film with white led's on the outter ring with no plastic blade, a user selectable inner ring color that has the 16 segments and count up feature, sounds possibly too.

 

[DrewSmith007]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

YouTube - ‪LED cube 8x8x8 demo‬‏

that's an 8x8x8, you'd only need a 4x4x4 to get to 64 LED's.

His instructables project page is in the info.

EDIT: Just thought I'd add that they don't have to be in a cube, but the wiring gets more complicated.

 

[kurtyboy]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Yeah I know that, but it depends on the size of the driver. It has to fit in the disc.

YouTube - ‪LED cube 8x8x8 demo‬‏

that's an 8x8x8, you'd only need a 4x4x4 to get to 64 LED's.

His instructables project page is in the info.

EDIT: Just thought I'd add that they don't have to be in a cube, but the wiring gets more complicated.

 

[kurtyboy]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Just as I thought. There is no way that's fitting in any identity disc!

 

[exoray]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Just as I thought. There is no way that's fitting in any identity disc!

My go that is parts overkill for this application...

Anyway if you want lights and sound and you want it to fit in the disc, like I said I'm more then willing to help out but I need more input... I can easily replicate the effect in that video, it's just a matter of how many LEDs you want to use to get that effect, and how it fits into the disc...

 

[DrewSmith007]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

I don't see why it couldn't be done with an 8x8 array powered by an avr microcontroller (or an arduino) and 16 transistors.

 

[kurtyboy]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

All the info is in my first post. No sound, just lights.

My go that is parts overkill for this application...

Anyway if you want lights and sound and you want it to fit in the disc, like I said I'm more then willing to help out but I need more input... I can easily replicate the effect in that video, it's just a matter of how many LEDs you want to use to get that effect, and how it fits into the disc...

 

[DrewSmith007]

Re: Electronics gurus: Anyone know a suitable LED driver -->the perfect Tron Legacy d

Here's a video of a project I started years ago for a Cylon tail light assembly for my motorcycle. I pretty much stopped working on it when the bike got repo'd...

EDIT: Shoulda remembered to attach the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl95Y1vL338

It is a 28 LED 7x4 matrix powered solely by an AVR ATTiny 4314 microcontroller (about .5" x 1" x .375") and a 5 volt supply. It only turns one LED on at a time, so it only has current limiting resistors on the 4 rows.

Your 8x8 array would need 17ish volts to have them all on at once (assuming a 2.1 voltage drop for 8 series LED's). The micro cant handle that voltage, so the rows and columns would have to be sourced and sunk through transistors.