Our light-emitting pegboard display, affectionately known as "Peggy," provides a quick, easy, powerful and efficient way to drive a lot of LEDs-- up to 625-- in a big matrix covering almost a square foot of area. You can make an LED sign for your window, a geeky valentine for your sweetie, one bad-ass birthday card, or freak the holy bejesus out of Boston. Your call. It's a versatile, high-brightness display. How you configure it and what you do with it is up to you.

The display can run off batteries (3 'D' cells) or an optional ac adapter, and is designed to drive as many green/blue/white/violet LEDs as you care to solder into the holes, all with excellent brightness. The board can accommodate LEDs in several common sizes: 3mm, 5 mm (standard T-1 3/4 size), and 10 mm. A photosensor is provided that can automatically turn off the display in bright daylight or incandescent light.

Building it
Peggy is sold as a soldering kit [?]. Basic soldering skill is required, and you provide basic soldering tools: solder + iron and small wire clippers. Easy "through-hole" construction and clear, full-color printed instructions. No additional knowledge of electronics is presumed. Assembly time: 1 hour plus time to solder the LEDs themselves. Not sure if this kit is for you? Download the full instructions, including schematics here (1.7 MB PDF File). A further introduction to the project and its design is available here.

Printed circuit boards
The main component of this kit is a giant, beautifully made printed circuit board. It is 12x15" in overall size, two-sided with plated through holes. The board is manufactured with black epoxy soldermask on both sides for high visual contrast, and component locations are labeled on the top side of the board with a white silkscreen. The exposed pads are gold plated for easy soldering. The boards are RoHS compliant (lead free), manufactured to UL 94V-0 standards, and fully electrically tested. Mounting holes are provided at all four corners. Additional holes are provided for hanging the display from a hook or string.

Kit Configurations
This is an open-source project. In keeping with that spirit, we are offering these kits and the parts for them in different configurations for flexibility. LED selection is obviously a personal choice for this project, so you get to pick your own LEDs separately.

1. Full Kit ($80, US) includes the circuit board, preprogrammed microcontroller, battery holder, photosensor, switches, buttons, rubber feet and all other components needed to make the pegboard display base, along with full color printed instructions. Just add batteries and LEDs.

2. Options and accessories: AC adapters, tools, and other related items.

3. Sets of LEDs of different colors, to fill up your Peggy part way or all the way with different colors for awesome pixel art.

We are out of stock of Peggy 1.0 kits. If you need one, they are (last we checked!) in stock at the MakerShed.

(Also: Can we interest you in a Peggy 2.0 kit? They're pretty nifty.)

AC Adapters
Peggy displays are designed to run on batteries; Peggy kits come complete with a battery holder. You can also drive Peggy with an energy-efficient wall-plug AC adapter. This is a "sub kit" that includes the adapter, power jack, and a slider switch for choosing between battery and adapter power.
The US/Canada AC adapter kit is not currently in stock; it will ship about a week after you place your order.

US/Canada AC adapter	$12
International AC adapter   (Select plug type)	$19	EUR Plug UK Plug AUS Plug

Resistor Lead Bender
Handy high-productivity tool for making neat bends in the leads of your resistors when assembling kits. Read more about these here.

Resistor Lead Bender	$5

"Mix & Match" LEDs:
Bring your own to the party, or pick up some of ours if you like.

We recommend these 10 mm LEDs with diffused lenses, which are available in a variety of colors. Priced per pack of 100 LEDs.

White	$33
Blue	$33
Green	$28

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About our kits
We take great pride in our kit designs; we believe in clear instructions, unambiguous labeling, goodies, and including a few extras of most small, easy to lose and/or break components. Assembly of the boards is pretty straightforward if you like to solder; it basically requires stuffing the components in the boards and soldering (a lot of) easy through-hole components. You should have prior experience soldering and basic soldering tools. Read more about what to expect in our kits here.

Lead Free
Peggy circuit boards, components, LEDs and power supplies are all RoHS compliant (lead free). If you're building one of our kits, you'll find that everything works well with either regular or lead-free solder-- whichever you care to use.