Hardware for a 24*11 led matrix

Hi,

I want to build a led matrix which would display a plot of a variable (say, temperature) over time. It will look like the attached file "plot.png" (for example-- this one show that three hours ago, the temperature was 3° higher than it is now).

I'm new to led matrix designs, so I'd like some advice for choosing the hardware. My initial idea for to use three 74HC4017 counters to loop though the columns and two 74HC595 to control what to display for each columns (i.e. row control). The circuit diagram will be quite similar to this one except that it will have three counters and two shift registers.

My question are : is it possible to wire theses three counters (which count up to 10) together to emulate a counter that counts up to 24? Can I actually displays these "bars" mentionned earlier with these shift registers?

Thanks.

PS: I'm sorry if these questions look newbish ; things will become clearer to me once I'll be able to actually fiddle with these ICs, hence asking you for confirmation before ordering them. Actually, I don't even have more than a vague idea of what the Arduino program will look like, but this is for later.

plot.png

Yes, it looks like you can cascade three 74HC4017 decade counters to get your 24 column selectors. After 23 clocks you can pull the Master Reset line to get back to 0.

Two 20mA capable output shift registers to drive parallel anodes across the screen,

and the TPIC6A595 shift registers to sink 220mA from the cathode rows.

Thank you for your replies.