We always find it funny when we see ads for modern LED TVs. These TVs don’t use LEDs to show the picture. They are nothing more than LCD screens with LED backlighting instead of cold cathode fluorescent lamps. [Akshaylals] had a few LCD laptop and phone panels that were defunct and decided to recycle them to get to the LEDs within.
Most panels are lit from one or two edges with a bar of LEDs. You only have to peel off some tape and plastic. If you wonder what all those plastic sheets do, see the [Engineer Guy’s] video, below.
[Akshaylals] was afraid that trying to desolder the surface mount LEDs would damage them so instead he simply cut the strips into smaller pieces. To demonstrate the usefulness of the LEDs, he made some large 7-segment LED displays, using two of the “free” LEDs on each side of each segment.
Some super glue and hot glue along with some small wires put everything together. You’d just want to be careful about the polarity of the LEDs which you can check with an ohmmeter. Probably a good idea to make sure they are working before you glue them down, too.
For a test, there’s an LED driver board that lets an Arduino drive the whole affair with 8 pins. The plan is to eventually use the bright white display in an alarm clock project.