A scrolling ticker is one of those projects that looks simple until you try to feed it live data. The maker has the hardware side already working: a long horizontal bar of RGB LED matrix panels driven by a Raspberry Pi, currently showing screensaver modes while the real content feeds are still to come. Sports, news, weather, flight information and an audio frequency spectrum display are all planned, with the maker hunting down APIs for whatever data sources turn up.
The hardware choices stand out. Four 128x64 P2.5 panels from AliExpress, costing a little under $150 with shipping, are connected through an Adafruit Triple LED Bonnet using two of its three ports for daisy-chained pairs. The panels only had HUB75E inputs, so the maker soldered surface mount 2x8 connectors onto two boards to chain them, and made their own HUB75E cables since the supplied ones were too short. Custom cables also let the connectors be oriented to avoid twists and folds, which seems a neat touch. Power is split between a Mean Well LRS-200-5 for the LEDs and fans and a separate RS-15-5 for the Pi, so LED voltage drop cannot disturb the Raspberry Pi. A Noctua 40x20 5V fan sits at each end of the case, alongside a GeeekPi fan on the Pi itself.
The case is printed in five sections using roughly 2.5 kg of matte black PETG, with two interchangeable end pieces for wall or table mounting and wiring designed for quick disconnects when swapping between them. Printed extras include a terminal cover for the power supply, a bracket for the GeeekPi fan, and cable routing guides.
The open question is the software: the maker considers the hardware pretty much settled but says much software work remains, and the specific APIs have not been chosen yet.