Apr 2024
Creating a Web-Powered LED Display
I built a Wi-Fi controlled LED matrix that displays Minecraft textures selected from a web app on desktop or mobile.
Video summary
I set out to make a cheaper and more customizable Minecraft LED panel after seeing how expensive similar products were. The video walks through lighting the matrix, extracting Minecraft textures from the game files, solving the display quality problem with a diffuser, and then building a web interface so the physical panel can change textures on demand.
What I built
I programmed the LED matrix, loaded Minecraft texture data, designed and 3D printed diffuser pieces, and tested the fit before committing to the full 16x16 grid. After the hardware looked right, I built a searchable web app that renders the available block textures, lets me search by name, and sends the selected texture to the LED matrix over Wi-Fi.
Technical takeaways
The diffuser was the key hardware detail. Without it, the LEDs were too harsh and individual textures were hard to read; with it, each pixel became a clean uniform square and the colors looked much closer to the source texture. On the software side, the project connected frontend texture selection to Wi-Fi messages that the matrix could receive and render, which made the final display feel like a real connected product instead of just a one-off electronics demo.