Advice needed: increasing visibility of LED display

mpark

I picked up a 4" LED display at UPENE and got it working. It's OK in lower light, just not very visible in bright light. Plus I don't like seeing the individual LEDs. As an experiment I put a piece of thin paper over the display to diffuse each segment; now each segment lights up evenly but overall visibility in bright light is worse, of course.

I'm passing 90mA through each segment, and each segment is on 25% of the time. If I pass more current, the LEDs start to change color from green to yellow, which makes me think 90mA is about the limit.

Any suggestions for improving the visibility of this thing? Ideally I'd like it to be mounted in a window, visible to passers-by. Seems unlikely at the moment, but maybe one of you has the answer.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Increasing contrast will be just as good as increasing brightness. To do that, you can use a sheet of smoke-gray Plexiglas over the top. That way, the light emanating from the LEDs will get filtered once; but the light reflecting from the background will get filtered twice, coming in and going out.

-Phil

mpark

Thanks, Phil! Now off to TAP Plastics.