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I have a matrix of 32-by-32 LEDs that I need to control using a driver. The largest driver that I found was a 16-by-16 driver by Linear Technology, and there is no driver that goes higher than 16-by-16.

Here are the requirements:

  1. monochrome LEDs (color not needed)
  2. LEDs just need to go on or off, no greyscale required
  3. pixels cannot be addressed individually, need to use column/row method

Is it possible to use two or more drivers together for this purpose? How? If not, what could be the alternative?

jippie
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Matin Esfahani
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  • Please indicate your planned matrix with a schematic, and also share **which LTC part** you found, that seems to suit your purpose partially. There are several 32-channel LED drivers, by Linear Tech (LT3746) and others, and all the way up to 132 channel LED drivers from other manufacturers, e.g. [AS1130](http://www.ams.com/eng/Products/Lighting-Management/LED-Driver-ICs/AS1130). Not really seeing what specifically is the problem described in the question. – Anindo Ghosh May 16 '13 at 04:21
  • Possible duplicate of [Getting a large number of (~100) digital output signals from Arduino](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/47043/14004) and also [Best way to control 130 - 140 LEDS with Arduino Uno 32/64 bit led drivers?](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/51767/14004). Multiple ways of driving large numbers of LEDs are provided in the respective answers. – Anindo Ghosh Jul 15 '13 at 12:29

2 Answers2

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I have 2 recommendations for you:

1) You could wire the matrix to four of the 16x16 drivers and use and MCU (AVR or PIC) programmed to handle the output to the matrix in four quarters.

2) since you do not require greyscale, you could use shift registers, which come in a variety of output configurations, the most effective (well... cheap) way to accomplish your goal with these would be to use 8 8ch or 4 16ch SIPO (serial in parallel out) shift registers. if you have a limited number of IO pins on your MCU, then you can daisy-chain the shift registers with not too much trouble in the code and 1 more shift register.

richendes
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Nathan Simpson
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Serial input, 16 channel (cascades with Sout/SDO to 32 or more) driver for columns / rows: -

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OR....

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There are other that may do like the MAX16809, LT3754, LT3745 and TLC5929

For the row/column you could use a 16 channel demux like the HEF4067B - this is only good for 10mA drive but you should find a higher power device. These are addressed and two devices with an invert on one of the enable pins will give you 32 lines.

Andy aka
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