Barco OMIX O10 8×11 LED array teardown

barco_online

Barco make huge modular LED displays. They range from the small (shown on the left above). To full stadium sized installations.

barco_block

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.

barco_front

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.

barco_back

In order to withstand harsh outdoor conditions these units are heavily sealed. It too some serious work getting inside:

barco_hack

The LEDs are sealed below a plastic overlay and a black mesh which you can see hacked to bits in the above picture.

barco_leds

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.

barco_not_pcb

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:
barco_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:

barco_ic

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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