Seeing the LED board before it exists
Waiting for parts is the slow part of any hardware project. I wanted to see what the board would look like before I owned one, so the web app got a preview.
A dot matrix in the browser
The preview draws the display the way the real panel will: 128 by 64 dots, with the same fonts, colors, and layout. It animates too. Pages change on the same timer, and the ticker scrolls along the bottom.
That turned out to matter more than I expected:
- I could design every page (a single card, your collection total, the biggest movers) without hardware.
- I could show people what it does. A glowing preview on a laptop explains the product faster than any description.
- Later on, the same drawing code became what the real board displays, so what you see in the preview is what the board shows.
The same night I put together the list of parts to order, and started waiting.