My bad, I meant 300 hz, not mhz, for the 2N2222. Got so used to typing "mhz" that I didn't notice. My bad.
I already pointed to the reference. "\note The default of 8192 means the PWM frequency is 976.5625Hz */".
EDIT: I'd still like to try using transistors. Inversion makes sense since I have the "BLANK" line going through it. Is there a magical way to fix inversion? Do I just hang the chip up-side down? (Canned laughter here, please.)
I'll try getting transistors happy then, but it'd help if I knew what wires to stick where. I'm Googling stuff but it's bringing up not-so-useful results.
I can't control each IC directly. I'd need a total of 28 PWM pins to do that. (4 PWM pins per IC, 7 IC's).
No, instead of daisy chaining, make like a star-distribution from the control pin to the 7 end points.
Can't help you with the buffer, you need to look up the data sheets for your transistor and determine the base/emitter/collector. No mind readers here!
I thought of doing a bus/star formation earlier but thought it was a stupid idea. I guess I severely underestimated how much wires can screw with data. It works perfectly now! Even my tests that do far more than I'd ever do when sequenced with music (Just constant events, no delays anywhere) don't throw them off now! Gosh. Wow.
For future reference, what kinda wire should I be buying? Larger or smaller gauge? Solid or stranded?
Stranded's easier to work with, but is solid better for not running into the situation I was just in?
I might slow it down, I don't know if I can get this to reach all the way down to the end of my second breadboard.. Hopefully it'll keep up. I've already found out that 57600 baud is barely enough for 20 events/second and that's the fastest the software controlling it allows. How much slower would setting SPCR to 3 make things? Still enough for 57600?
I knew that. I have some of those wires you linked to and I agree, they're far nicer than just plain stranded wire when you're trying to get them into a breadboard, but what carries a signal better?
One other problem just popped up. Literally. The IC's are having issues staying in the breadboard. Sometimes one end pops up a bit, sometimes the entire chip pops out. Are there any tricks to keeping them in?
What happens if you double the values current setting resistors on the TLCs? If that gets it working, then it would indicate that it is the LED switching current that is causing the problem, and better grounding/decoupling is the solution.
Stripboard is easy to work with once you learn how to use a soldering iron.
I'm not sure -- Kinda hard to check now since it's working fine. Like I said though, the PSU isn't even the same for the IC's anymore. Got two PSU's, one just for the LED's, and it's helped a lot.
I know how to solder, but what do I do to make connections on a stripboard? Using wires sounds "wrong" and so does making long solder bridges..