I’m sure you’re familiar with the Goodyear Blimp, which is seen over major sporting events. It has an array of high-intensity light-emitting diodes that allow it to display words and shapes on the side. (See here for FAQ’s about the Goodyear Blimp. Actually, it’s blimps, because there are more than one.) There are 7,560 LED lights on the blimp, with 3,780 on each side. Since each LED is capable of only showing one color, they are aranged in groups of three (the standard red, green, blue that can combine to make white.) That means there are only 1260 “pixels” on one side of the blimp.
Now, I couldn’t find the exact specificts, but by analyzing a photo of text on the blimp, I believe these pixels are aranged in an array 70 pixels wide by 18 pixels high.
The Goodyear Blimp is 192 feet long. By way of contrast, the most famous dirigible, the Hindenburg, was 804 feet long. (There’s a difference between a blimp and a dirigible: a blimp does not have a rigid structure inside to hold its shape, whereas a dirigible does.)
So, by using a dirigible four times longer, you could increase the width of the array to 280 pixels. Assuming the height could be increased proportionately, you would have 72 pixels in height, which means your array overall would have 20,160 pixels, as compared to only 1260 on the Goodyear blimp.
That display would allow for a much better image to be displayed, including meaningful full-motion video. Advertising on it would carry much more impact than advertising on the Goodyear Blimp.
So, now that the idea is out there, someone needs to build…
…the LED Zeppelin!
Sorry. I could not resist.