LED Displays explained

Gaming support has been producing bespoke LED signs over the last eight years.

LED Signs are build from individual LED panels that are interlinked.
The distance between pixels on a LED panel is called the “Dot Pitch” or “Pitch”.

A typical LED panel has 64 x 64 pixels uses 5 or 24 volts and can be daisy chained, in theory, indefinitely.

At Gaming Support we use panels that have a dot pitch of 2.5mm (P2.5) and are perfect for creating displays that look great at a short distance. 

The most standard LED panels have a resolution of 64x64 pixels and a pitch of 2.5mm. However led panels can come in many different sizes, dot-pitch 3 and 4.5mm are available for longer distance viewing. Each size can be useful for achieving your custom sign design.

Rigid vs Flex

Most LED display are build from rigid panels. These panel are optimal for creating flat displays and can be positioned to create a 90 degree seamless edge on the display.

If you want a curved display you can see small gaps between rigid panels.

To solve this we use flexible LED panels that can give you a seamless curve and endless possibilities in creating custom designs. Most LED panels come with magnetic spacers  that hold the LED panel in place.

LED setup

What is the hardware that is required to build a LED display?

The main components are: LED Panels, receiving cards and a sending controller. 

Receiving Card and sending controller. 

A led panel is connected to a receiving card with a flat-cable. A receiving card can connect to multiple panels depending on the number of pixels of each panel. All panels attached to one receiving card is called a cabinet and are the basic building blocks of a display.

Each receiving card receives its data through an cat5 cable that is coming from the sending controller. Receiving cards can be daisy chained to pass data on to the next card.

The sending controller is responsible for decoding a video signal and sending it over the cat5 cable with the correct screen configuration. 

Single Board Computers

Are there any other ways to create a LED display that does not required this many parts?

Yes there is, Gaming Support is using a single board computer (Raspberry pi) to directly adres the LED panels.

With this solution, a LED display with 3 rows can be created for a fraction of the price. 

Software for this solution is freely obtainable.