I’ve been wanting to make a 1:220 scale megacity diorama and don’t know what options I have. I’m projecting I’ll need to control the speed of two motors, some LEDs, and maybe a dozen or so tiny screens as digital billboards. It’s the screens I’m worried most about.
I’d like to scavenge digital displays from e-waste, group them by type/resolution, and have a slideshow for each group that rotates throughout the city.
My initial idea was to use digital photo frames, but they’re too big, and used ones are still too expensive for the quantity I need.
I’m assuming I will need multiple controllers(/processors?), but I don’t know enough terminology to find what I need. I’m still thinking out the diorama, so if it’s too hard/expensive I can just do backlit decals, but that’s boring.
Well, MCU programming and hardware is another thing to know about ahead of time, but ok. There are tons of displays of all sizes on waveshare.com if you want. Tons more on aliexpress. A standard large billboard is apparently 48 ft wide (per web search) so you’d want to scale accordingly. Maybe with e-ink to simulate a reflective billboard. OLED’s would be for neon signs and stuff.
I like the Raspberry Pi Pico because it’s very well documented, but yeah, ESP32 stuff might be cheaper.
Post some pics when it’s working!