I've been collecting reference material for a while because there seems to be confusion about what the ECTO-1A Dot Matrix LED signs actually show, to the point where the recently released Haslab ECTO-1A contains multiple errors.
I figured it's probably time to share what I have with the community and see if we can work together to fill in the blanks. I realise there have been other attempts to document this in the past, but none of them seemed correct.
This Reddit thread is probably the closest so far, but it's far from accurate.
The incredible ECTO-1A New Jersey is also close but misses an entire chunk of the sequence too (maybe once this thread is finished I'll send the details over and see if they want to roll out an update).
To keep this easy to read I think we can attack this in a few passes.
Hardware
According to the GBFans wiki the sign is approximately 76"x 10" (193x25cm).
The sign is made up of a matrix of red and green LEDs (or at least I assume they're LEDs, not incandescent bulbs).
Each "pixel" is made of 4 individual LEDs, I don't believe these are ever operated independently.
Here are some close-ups:
![Image]()
![Image]()
As you can see, the green pixels sit slightly lower than the red pixels, which is clearly visible in the film when both red and green pixels are shown at the same time (note how the "BACK" text doesn't align with "WE'RE"):
![Image]()
The matrix contains exactly 80 pixels across, by 7 pixels down.
![Image]()
This is a total of 560 pixels of each colour.
That's 1120 total pixels, each containing 4 LEDs, bringing us to 4480 individual LEDs per sign.
Based on the Wiki dimensions, we can estimate that the sign uses 5mm or 6mm LEDs (this is unconfirmed).
As far as I can tell from all my reference material, the two signs always show the same thing at the same time (they're mirrored). It's likely they're connected to the same controller.
Next, onto the Text...
I figured it's probably time to share what I have with the community and see if we can work together to fill in the blanks. I realise there have been other attempts to document this in the past, but none of them seemed correct.
This Reddit thread is probably the closest so far, but it's far from accurate.
The incredible ECTO-1A New Jersey is also close but misses an entire chunk of the sequence too (maybe once this thread is finished I'll send the details over and see if they want to roll out an update).
To keep this easy to read I think we can attack this in a few passes.
- Hardware - The sign itself
- Text - What does it actually say?
- Sequence - In what order?
- Animations & Timing - How it's presented
Hardware
According to the GBFans wiki the sign is approximately 76"x 10" (193x25cm).
The sign is made up of a matrix of red and green LEDs (or at least I assume they're LEDs, not incandescent bulbs).
Each "pixel" is made of 4 individual LEDs, I don't believe these are ever operated independently.
Here are some close-ups:
As you can see, the green pixels sit slightly lower than the red pixels, which is clearly visible in the film when both red and green pixels are shown at the same time (note how the "BACK" text doesn't align with "WE'RE"):
The matrix contains exactly 80 pixels across, by 7 pixels down.
This is a total of 560 pixels of each colour.
That's 1120 total pixels, each containing 4 LEDs, bringing us to 4480 individual LEDs per sign.
Based on the Wiki dimensions, we can estimate that the sign uses 5mm or 6mm LEDs (this is unconfirmed).
As far as I can tell from all my reference material, the two signs always show the same thing at the same time (they're mirrored). It's likely they're connected to the same controller.
Next, onto the Text...
Statistics: Posted by prodestrian — January 11th, 2026, 1:49 am