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.
I do model building with LEGO, and I use the Raspberry Pi Pico (which is different from a Raspberry Pi). For programming, I use the Arduino environment.
The controller has two cores, and, in the version I use it, has a wifi interface.
My models are modular and have a 12V power bus, and I use DC/DC adapters to generate the 5V or 3.3V needed for some applications. I use 12V because some lights and many motors needs them.
The controller has over 20 IO pins, lots of options for i2c and SPI busses, and the PIO system allows for easily driving NeoPixel displays.
The wifi is used to connect the processors to a central Mosquitto broker, so they can communicate, e.g. coordinating light effects or reacting to a button press somewhere.