Barco OMIX O10 8×11 LED array teardown
Barco make huge modular LED displays. They range from the small (shown on the left above). To full stadium sized installations.
The system seems to be broken down into a series of control boxes. Each box manages a handful of LED arrays. A typical control box seems to manage about 9 individual arrays.
I found a few of these arrays in a junk shop going for about 2USD. So I decided to pick them up and play with them. They appear to be part of the IP65 rated, or at least outdoor line of LED displays from Barco.
They’re 8×11 arrays of RGB LEDs. You can see the LEDs are quite well sealed in. On the back is a 23pin connector embedded in a massive heatsink. There’s also a fan under the gray plastic.
In order to withstand harsh outdoor conditions these units are heavily sealed. It too some serious work getting inside:
The LEDs are sealed below a plastic overlay and a black mesh which you can see hacked to bits in the above picture.
They look like standard diffused RGB5050 LEDs. Removing this PCB was serious work, the whole enclosure has been flooded with some kind of resin. I assume this helps make them weather proof, but also be rated to help conduct heat to the heatsink. I suppose when you have a massive array of these things, moving the heat must be a challenge.
Though you can see traces, components, and even silk screen markings. The above image is /NOT/ the PCB. It was what was left behind after pulling the PCB off. A bunch of stuff remained embedded in the resin!
Here’s the actual PCB:
That resin really made a mess of everything, pulling the ICs right off the board. One, fell out while I was prying it apart:
Interestingly the ICs here are either remarked, or they really are custom Barco ICs. I guess that’s not impossible, but I find it slightly surprising!
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