|
Ever caught yourself staring amazed at these colorful LED displays on bus stops, train stations or airports and wished you could have one at home? Stop wishing, we have them now.
This LED Matrix has 2048 bright RGB LEDs, arranged as 64x32 grid. On the back there are two 8x2 IDC connectors (one input, one output: yes you can chain them together, though Adafruits library doesn't support more than one at the moment) and 12 16-bit latches that allow you to drive the display with a 1:16 scan rate.
These panels require 13 digital pins (6 bit data, 7 bit control) and a good 5V supply, up to 4A per panel. Actually we found that if you can resist the temptation to set all 2048 to bright white, you can get along just fine with our 5V/3A supply (see below under recommended products).
Keep in mind that these displays are designed to be driven by FPGAs or other high speed processors: they do not have built in PWM control of any kind. Instead, you're supposed to redraw the screen over and over to 'manually' PWM the whole thing. On a 16 MHz Arduino Mega, Adafruit managed to squeeze 12-bit color (4096 colors) with 40% CPU usage. But this display would really shine if driven by any FPGA, CPLD, Propeller, XMOS or other high speed multi-core controller. The good news is that the display is pre-white balanced with nice uniformity so if you turn on all the LEDs it's not a particularly tinted white.
Note: Driving these displays uses around 3200 bytes of RAM, so an Arduino Mega or compatible board is required to make it work. It will not work with an Arduino Uno! Adafruits library currently only supports the Arduino Mega, though you are more than welcome to contribute for other suitable platforms.
Specification:
- Dimensions: 318mm x 158mm x 15mm / 12.5” x 6.2” x 0.6”
- Weight: 330g
- 5V regulated power input @ ~4A (with all LEDs on)
- 2000 mcd LEDs on 3mm pitch
- 1/16 scan rate
- Indoor display, 160 degree visibility
- Displays are 'daisy-chainable' - connect one output to the next input - but Adafruits Arduino example code does not support this yet
Documents:
|
