![]() You can could measure it out yourself, the pixels are about 1.5" square and 2" deep with a 12mm hole in the middle for the LEDs. If you are going to do it by hand you can easily lay this out and cut strips of cardboard. You can use it to laser cut your own, or you can print it out and use it as a template to hand cut the cardboard. I have added the 3d model in DWG format to the files for those interested.Īs mentioned before our laser cutter is 32"x18" so the CAD files I made to do the laser cutting are set on that size. ![]() Notes: The notches and joints have a 1/64" clearance on both sides to let the cardboard slide together nicely. Setting it up this way allows the parts of the panel to slide and notch together without the need for much glue, while also ensuring we would get perfect squares for the pixels. I made each panel so that each vertical and horizontal fin would slide into each other and they would notch also into the base. ![]() I modeled the all the parts of the panel very accurately in an effort to let the laser cutter do as much work as possible. To make the files for the laser cutter I modeled the base using Rhino. The base holds the LEDs, the slate provide the pixels and overall stability of the panel, the cover diffuses the light, and the strap makes it portable. Panel The panel is made up of a few main parts: the base, the slats, the cover, and the strap. Our laser cutter has a 32"x18" bed so I had them cut the sheets down to that size. The base is made from 1/8" cardboard sheets purchased from the local art/hobby store. You can either send it out to be cut by a company that does laser cutting, or you can go the manual route and print the PDF and lay it out on the cardboard and cut it by hand. Luckily I have access to a laser cutter, so I knew I would be using it to make these. That set our scale of our pixels at 1.57" square (22" / 14 pixels, for the Ghost). We ended up at 22" as the size of the ghosts in height and width, but you may want to do a different size. I measure him and held up some cardboard cutouts to see what was the largest size he could still comfortably put his arms over and still walk. To scale them properly we started by making sure it would be the right size for the smallest family member, my son. This gives us the high end of how big we can make each pixel. The strings of LEDs we purchased had a distance of about 3" (75mm) between LEDs. I wanted them all to be the same size relative to one another, so each pixel would be the same size on each costume. Once we knew the width and height by pixels we have to decide how big we wanted to make the panels. Pac-Man is 13x13 and Ms.Pac-Man is 14x14. Size of Panels You can see by the layout in Excel that the Ghosts are 14 pixels in height by 14 pixels in width. Pac-Man is 151, which means we needed 628 LEDs for the pixels. Number of LEDs The Ghosts cover 170 pixels, Pac-Man is 137, and Ms. The individual numbers of the LEDs are needed later for programming the Ardunio board. I then laid out each frame of the animations in Excel so we know where the number of LEDs and the overall layout of each board. For instance you can see the different frames of the ghost legs and Pac-Man's mouth in the sprites above. ![]() These help ensure we are getting the correct pixel pixel layout and shows each frame of the animations. I wanted it to be accurate and authentic to the original 8-bit characters so I began by looking up the original game sprites. Pac-Man, and the ghosts Blinky and Pinky. We chose Pac-Man characters for the family. The first step is always planning, but hey it's worth noting, especially if you want to do a different 8-bit character.
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