Vestaboard – A smart display to connect and inspire

Re:Vestaboard – A smart display to connect and inspire by dcminter on Wednesday November 24, 2021 @07:43AM (#29329416)

I was looking at these the other day - in the process of browsing around the subject I found this maker-project to create custom ones:

https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap

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Re:Vestaboard – A smart display to connect and inspire by scottbez1 on Wednesday November 24, 2021 @11:25AM (#29331652)

Let me know if you have any questions about the project or split-flaps in general!

I built a big one for a City of Palo Alto art festival recently which was a lot of work but really rewarding: https://youtu.be/g9EPabcxBsM

There were some comments about the Vestaboard cost elsewhere in this thread so I figured I'd mention, my raw BOM cost for that display (108 modules, 40 characters each) was about $2700, so I actually don't find their pricing that crazy when you consider what's happening mechanically inside the display. (short video from inside mine: https://youtu.be/4rBKxy0gwNI)

They're not completely comparable of course - my display was a one-off build without economies of scale from stamped or injection-molded parts, much larger physically, and I had substantial parts of it manufactured in the US - but generally there's just a lot of pieces that add up quickly in cost.

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Re:Vestaboard – A smart display to connect and inspire by dcminter on Wednesday November 24, 2021 @12:33PM (#29332613)

For me personally it was mostly idle curiosity of a "what would it take..." kind, but it's a very nice write up!

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