I’m thinking of building a 16x16 rgb led matrix by cutting up a led strip (ie. some Chinese Digital Dream Color WS2811 5050 SMD RGB strip).
I would like it to be about 5 feet (160 cm) and do this by spacing out the individual led’s for every 4" inches (10 cm).
Could anyone see any problems with this setup, and would it be possible to control the matrix with an Arduino and the FastSPI lib.?
I’m a newbe at this, so please bear with me. 
Would you be spacing the LEDS vertically too? If so you need to cut out each individual LED to space it out… if not you will have it as a ~1 foot by 5 foot matrix…a bit more then a foot if 30 LED per M and less than if 60 LED per M… Also you could get one of these, though its much smaller area: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/16-16pixels-WS2812-led-digital-ws2811-IC-controlled-flex-panel-light-size-17cm-17cm-DC5V-input/825359364.html
Oh and in any case its all controllable by fastSPI/Arduino… though you might have to have it all chained/through one pin currently… not sure what the max on multi pins is in the current version but I had issues with 2… (one fastSPI objects show() would affect the other pin as well)
Yeah, I was thinking of doing the vertical spacing, I know it’s a lot of soldering, but I’m looking for a big matrix, with
with few leds. Thanks for the input!
Troels, had you considered using something like these
Those are 3" apart, but there are ones available that are spaced further apart.
That would definitely be a good idea, but I think they are a little expensive compared to the led strips I was looking at. Being a poor student, price is important.
With most LED things on Adafruit you can go to the source (China) for the cheaper price.
this is double the LEDS for almost half the price