IoT Broadway Marquee Sign

I made this sign for my Reddit Secret Santa giftee in 2018 since she was really into Broadway (shows). I don't know much about Broadway but I know they use marquee letters to advertise their shows!

Video all about it: https://youtu.be/oTSosQ7iYjU

Each letter is 185mm tall with varying widths and varying amounts of WS2811 (pixel) lights (112 total). I made the body and front (frames) of the letters in OpenSCAD then added the (12.6mm) holes for the pixels by hand using Blender (because it was quicker). Holes were added to each letter to accept "mounting tabs" that were affixed to each letter's front (frame) in Blender.

Each letter has a little triangular mounting "lip" on the back to make the sign wall-mountable. The controller box (which is meant to house an ESP32 board sitting in a 6x4cm protoboard) also has mounting holes--for screws. I added hot glue to each mounting "lip" to make sure they would not slip while hung on the wall (hot glue has a rubbery, non-slip texture). Ihighly recommend you do the same if you print out one of these for yourself.

Because the Y is, well, a "Y" I highly recommend configuring the top three pixels on either side to be clones of each other. You do this by, er, "making a Y" (3 way split) with your WS2811 pixels. After that 3rd pixel coming up from the bottom the signal will go to both the left and right sides simultaneously and it looks much nicer than up one side then up the other.

For each letter I added a male and female JST connector so they can be rearranged at-will to spell different things. I also made a couple of extra "extension cords" that would allow placement of letters further apart from each other (so you can separate words). This isn't necessary but I do recommend it (it's really not THAT much more work--you have to cut and solder all the wires anyway).

The source code I used on the ESP32 board can be found here: https://github.com/riskable/wifi\_broadway\_sign

Print instructions

This should be a fairly straightforward print on any printer. It's mostly straight lines and the tallest print is 60mm. Feel free to use a larger nozzle (I used 0.6mm) and nice, thick layers because the sign is meant to be viewed from a distance--no one is going to see the lines!

Some of the mounting tabs don't line up perfectly but it didn't end up being a big deal for me... I just sanded the holes (or the tabs) slightly and they went right in and held strong.

The light diffusers don't seem to fit very well--not sure why--but they do seem to stay in place once you force them on there (haha).

The little slide-on stand for the O works great but found the one for the D tends to work it's way up the side of the D over time (slow tilt). To fix that I applied some hot glue and shoved it in there while it was still cooling (waited just long enough so that it wasn't sticky--but still easy to shape). That made it stay put (while still being able to remove it).