Ecto-1A LED Sign Boards

10 min read

Ecto-1A LED sign boards, recreated The Ecto-1A LED sign boards are the two roof-mounted dot-matrix signs added to the Ecto-1 for Ghostbusters II (1989), when the car was upgraded to the Ecto-1A. One board faces each side of the car and both always show the same content: a looping sequence of red, green and amber messages such as GHOSTBUSTERS, WE'RE BACK and WHO YA GONNA CALL? US!, along with the phone number CALL JL5-2020.

This page collects what the community has worked out about the boards: the hardware, the full message list and running order, the fonts, colors and animations, and build plans and files for making a screen-accurate replica. Most of it comes from the GBFans reference thread Screen Accurate ECTO-1A Dot Matrix LED Sign (Reference).¹ Details that are still uncertain are marked unconfirmed, and effects that have been reconstructed rather than observed are marked inferred.

Hardware

Resolution: 80 columns × 7 rows, counted from film frames.¹
Pixels: each pixel is a cluster of 4 LEDs. The clusters are never driven separately.¹
Colors: every pixel has a red cluster and a green cluster. Lighting both reads as amber or yellow on screen; there is no separate yellow LED.¹²
Green offset: the green clusters sit slightly lower than the red ones. It shows wherever red and green text meet, for example where "BACK" doesn't line up with "WE'RE".¹³
LED count: 560 pixels per color, 4,480 LEDs per board.¹
Two boards, one per side, always showing the same content.¹
Manufacturer: unknown. The thread's investigation is ongoing.

Panel mapping ## Messages

The boards cycle through twelve screens. The IDs A–L follow prodestrian's breakdown in the reference thread.¹

A — GHOSTBUSTERS: bold narrow font, edge to edge. Red, then green, with rapid red/green swaps.
B — FOR HIRE…: bold narrow font, red text inside a green border.
C — WE'RE READY: font and color unconfirmed. Shown here in the thin font in amber.
D — TO BELIEVE YOU: thin font. Red, with one word highlighted at a time: TO in green, BELIEVE in amber, then YOU (YOU's color is inferred as green).
E — CALL JL5-2020: thin font, amber.
F — GHOSTBUSTERS: second appearance, green and then red.
G — WE'RE BACK: bold wide font, filling all 80 columns. WE'RE red and BACK green, then the colors swap.
G2 — five lines → green boxes: a graphic between WE'RE BACK and WHO YA (see Inferred effects).
H — WHO YA: bold wide font, red.
I — GONNA: bold wide font, color unconfirmed (shown red).
J — CALL?: bold wide font, red.
K — US!: bold wide font, red, between two green arrows that point inward at the word.
L — CALL JL5-2020: second appearance, amber, which then loops back to A.

Ecto-1A LED Sign Boards - GBFans.com Wiki | GBFans.com

Fonts

Enlarging the reference stills and sampling them on a fitted 80 × 7 grid showed that the boards use three different fonts.

Bold wide (WE'RE BACK, WHO YA, GONNA, CALL?, US!): 7-column letters with 2-pixel strokes. B, A, C and K were read pixel for pixel from a book scan of WE'RE BACK,³ and the phrase totals exactly 80 columns. The letters of WHO YA, GONNA, CALL? and US! are drawn in the same style, but no sharp reference of them exists yet (unconfirmed glyphs).
Bold narrow (GHOSTBUSTERS, FOR HIRE…): 6-column letters with 1-column gaps. GHOSTBUSTERS spans columns 0–78.
Thin 5 × 7 (TO BELIEVE YOU, CALL JL5-2020): confirmed by premiere-footage close-ups of CALL, BELIEVE and O.⁴

Bold wide font Bold narrow font Thin 5x7 font ## Sequence and animation

The running order comes from the thread's analysis of the film (around 00:37:06, 00:38:10, 00:49:44 and 01:22:59–01:24:54), the deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, and the 1989 premiere footage found by Kingpin.¹⁴ The timing of the end of the loop (CALL? to CALL JL5-2020) was measured frame by frame from a deleted museum scene.⁵

GHOSTBUSTERS slides up in red, turns green and shimmers, swaps between red and green about 16 times, then settles on green.
A solid green frame wipes to FOR HIRE…, followed by a green wipe.
WE'RE READY.
TO BELIEVE YOU, with the highlight moving word by word. It then wipes downward as CALL JL5-2020 slides in from the top.
A red wipe into GHOSTBUSTERS in green, which shimmers, wipes from green to red, and is followed by a solid red frame.
A green flash, then WE'RE BACK, with the two words swapping colors.
The five lines → green boxes graphic, looping several times.
WHO YA, GONNA, then CALL?, which slides up and out. The board then goes dark for about 0.8 s.
US! appears alone for about 0.6 s. The arrows then come on for about 1.2 s, go off for 0.8 s, and come back.
CALL JL5-2020 opens outward from the center while the arrows are still lit, holds for about 2 s, then slides down as red GHOSTBUSTERS rises to restart the loop.

Storyboard of the full loop Animated preview ## Inferred effects

Three effects are confirmed to happen on the boards, but their exact appearance hasn't been documented. The recreation renders them as clearly labeled best guesses.

Color wipes: the color of each wipe is reported in the thread (green into FOR HIRE…, green before WE'RE READY, red into the second GHOSTBUSTERS, green to red within it), but the direction is not. In the deleted museum scene, red sweeps in from the left on this board, so the recreation draws every wipe left to right.⁵
Shimmer: reported on green GHOSTBUSTERS, both before the red/green swaps and after the red wipe. The recreation renders it as random per-pixel sparkle.
Five lines → green boxes: the thread describes five vertical lines that each wipe across and are replaced by a green box, looping several times.¹ The deleted museum scene confirms red fills with dark dividers, then green growing outward from inside each section with red dividers, then red sweeping back from the left.⁵ Only the right third of the board is visible, out of focus, so the recreation assumes five 16-column sections. The measured spacing of 14–15 columns is consistent with that.

Wipes and shimmer (inferred) Lines to boxes (inferred) The thread also mentions a possible bounce and an upside-down flip of GHOSTBUSTERS. These are hedged ("seems", "possibly") and are left out of the recreation.

Plans

The plans below show every message as a numbered pixel map. Columns run 0–79 from the left and rows 0–6 from the top. Cells are colored red, green or amber (both lit). The same maps are available as plain text in the downloads.

Plan A: GHOSTBUSTERS Plan B: FOR HIRE Plan C: WE'RE READY Plan D: TO BELIEVE YOU Plan E: CALL JL5-2020 Plan F: GHOSTBUSTERS (second) Plan G: WE'RE BACK Plan G2: five lines to boxes (inferred) Plan H: WHO YA Plan I: GONNA Plan J: CALL? Plan K: US! Plan L: CALL JL5-2020 (second) ## Timing

The end of the loop is measured from the deleted museum scene: CALL? about 0.8 s, dark 0.8 s, US! with arrows 3.2 s, and CALL JL5-2020 about 2.4 s including its reveal.⁵
The 16 red/green swaps in GHOSTBUSTERS follow the thread's count.¹
All other holds are estimates. The screen-timed version uses 2-second holds, based on the measured CALL JL5-2020 hold, for a loop of about 44 seconds.

Building your own

CoolLED1248 panels (16 × 96): these inexpensive Bluetooth panels can load a ready-made animation file. A single file holds at most 113 frames, so there are two versions:

a single file with compressed timing (22.6 s);
a two-part, screen-timed version (44.2 s). Load both files and play Part 1 then Part 2.

Both versions have been tested on two separate 16 × 96 panels. Each board row uses two panel rows, so the green can sit half a pixel lower than the red, as on the real boards.

Arduino, ESP32 and other microcontrollers: use the C header, or the JSON frame data, which stores every pixel as 0 (off), 1 (red), 2 (green) or 3 (both). A microcontroller isn't limited to 113 frames, so the holds can be stretched to film timing.

RGB matrices (HUB75, WS2812): map "both" to an amber such as RGB (255, 180, 0). Pure yellow looks greenish on most panels.

Scratch-built replica: use separate red and green LED clusters in an 80 × 7 grid, drive the two colors independently, and mount the green slightly below the red.

Other panel sizes: the messages are designed for 80 columns. On narrower panels, scroll or scale with nearest-neighbor; never smooth the image. The generator script can produce CoolLED files for other sizes.

Downloads

All files below are on GitHub. A single zip of the build files will also be hosted on GBFans.com.

CoolLED1248 files (16 × 96 panel)

Single file, compressed timing, 113 frames, 22.6 s: Ecto-1A_GB2_16x96.jt
Two-part, screen-timed, 44.2 s. Load both and play Part 1 then Part 2:
- Ecto-1A_GB2_16x96_Part1.jt (A–F, 112 frames)
- Ecto-1A_GB2_16x96_Part2.jt (G–L, 109 frames)

On iOS or Android, download the file, tap it, and open it with CoolLED1248 (app version 2.x).

Attribution evidence

Ecto-1A_Attribution_Evidence_v10.pdf: one card per element, showing a credited source extract beside the recreation and marking it sourced, measured, estimate or inferred.

The source extracts in the PDF (film stills, Getty Images news footage, a book scan) belong to their owners. They are included only for attribution and comparison, and aren't covered by the project's MIT license.

Image files

Frames: 113 PNG frames, 80 × 7, 1 pixel = 1 LED, 200 ms each; sprite sheet.
Animated previews: 80 × 7 GIF, 16 × 96 panel GIF, screen-timed GIF.
Plans: A: GHOSTBUSTERS, B: FOR HIRE…, C: WE'RE READY, D: TO BELIEVE YOU, E: CALL JL5-2020, F: GHOSTBUSTERS (second), G: WE'RE BACK, G2: five lines → boxes, H: WHO YA, I: GONNA, J: CALL?, K: US!, L: CALL JL5-2020 (second); plain-text pixel maps; panel mapping.
Fonts: bold wide, bold narrow, thin 5 × 7.
Diagrams: storyboard, red/green offset close-up, wipes and shimmer, lines → boxes.

Code for other platforms

Porting guide: which file to use for each app or board, building a pixel-exact GIF, an Arduino example, RGB matrices, true red/green hardware, and scaling to other panel sizes.
Arduino / ESP32 / Teensy: ecto1a_frames.h, the deduplicated frames and playlist as PROGMEM arrays (2 bits per pixel).
Raspberry Pi, web, Python, JavaScript: ecto1a_frames.json (every frame), ecto1a_playlist.json (deduplicated), and the screen-timed ecto1a_full_frames.json / ecto1a_full_playlist.json.
Generator: generate.py builds every frame and export, including CoolLED files for other panel sizes. The file-format notes document the .jt format.
Full repository: github.com/rmbrumback-lab/ecto-1a-led-sign, with design notes, validation and the research log. The code and data are MIT-licensed.

Discussion

Screen-accurate ECTO-1A sign animation in the forum.

Open questions

These would replace estimates and inferences with facts. If you have reference, please post it in the reference thread.

Clear frames of GONNA (color and letters), and sharp frames of WHO YA and CALL?.
The font and color of WE'RE READY.
YOU's highlight color in TO BELIEVE YOU.
What the shimmer really looks like, and the direction of the wipes.
A sharp, full-width view of the five lines → green boxes graphic.
A sharp frame of the US! arrows.
Whether the FOR HIRE… border moves.
Uninterrupted footage of the full loop, for true timing.

Credits

This page builds on research shared in the GBFans forum:

prodestrian worked out the 80 × 7 red/green matrix, the green offset, the complete message list, the A–L sequence, and a scene-by-scene breakdown of the film, deleted scenes and premiere footage.
zerosum contributed pixel maps, premiere screen grabs, and the WE'RE BACK book scan.
Kingpin found the 1989 premiere footage, and identified the "yellow" as red and green lit together.
d_osborn pointed to the EPK and posted close-ups.
auc0le (JT-Edit) and UpDryTwist (coolledx-driver) documented the CoolLED file format in their open-source projects.
Recreation, plans and build files by ryan-brumback.

References

prodestrian et al. "Screen Accurate ECTO-1A Dot Matrix LED Sign (Reference)". GBFans.com forum, Ectomobiles. https://forum.gbfans.com/t/screen-accurate-ecto-1a-dot-matrix-led-sign-reference/26454 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

Kingpin, in the reference thread (page 2): the "yellow" is red and green lit together. ↩

zerosum, in the reference thread (post #10): hi-res book scan of the WE'RE BACK sign. ↩ ↩²

1989 Ghostbusters II premiere footage, Getty Images clip 1032076844, found by Kingpin and analyzed in the reference thread. ↩ ↩²

Ghostbusters II deleted scene (Hardemeyer at the museum), analyzed frame by frame (181 frames, about 14.8 s). Colors were calibrated against the confirmed red US!, green arrows and amber CALL JL5-2020. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

Ecto-1A LED Sign Boards

Hardware

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Ecto-1A LED Sign Boards

Hardware

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Fonts

Plans

Building your own

Downloads

CoolLED1248 files (16 × 96 panel)

Attribution evidence

Image files

Code for other platforms

Discussion

Open questions

Credits

References

Hardware

Hardware

Sign up free to join the GBFans.com community.

Sign up free to join the GBFans.com community.

Fonts

Plans

Building your own

Downloads

CoolLED1248 files (16 × 96 panel)

Attribution evidence

Image files

Code for other platforms

Discussion

Open questions

Credits

References

Footnotes