ColorCurtainEnglish

project overview

Year	2007
Number of pixels	18x8=144
Grayscales / Colors	24bit RGB
Illuminant	SMD RGB LED
Power input	100W
Contact person	Stefan Schürmans
Project website

ColorCurtain consists of 144 small circuit boards, each containing a single pixel. Those pixel boards are attached to a piece of cloth to form a display 18 pixels wide and 8 pixels in height. To diffuse the light sent out by the LEDs, there is a foil about 7 cm in front of the cloth.

Every pixel circuit board contains a RGB LED, a microcontroller and a small switching power supply converting the 48V supply voltage to the 5V needed to operate the microcontroller and the LED. The pixel boards are connected to chains of 16 or 64 pixels by connecting the data output of a pixel to the data input of the next pixel and forwarding the power supply wires. The chains are powered and supplied with data by a central distributor board. The distributor board is connected to a PC by 10Mbit ethernet.