The Colorduino is a RGB LED matrix driver platform basis on ATMega 328P. This design is to make user easily modify or write the firmware of Colorduino by Arduino IDE.
The driver circuit based on 3 MBI5168 constant current sink drivers and a M54564 darlington source driver, the Colorduino pairs the M54564 with a single DM163 constant current driver. In order to better drive the RGB matrix and reach their best performance, we use the professional LED driver chip DM163 on board, by using the DM163, the Colorduino gains three 8+6-bit channels of hardware PWM control of the LED’s freeing up the ATMega328P from having to implement it in software. And the DM163 comprises shift registers, data latches, 8×3 channel constant current and 64 x 256 gray level PWM for per color! Each channel provide a maximum current of 60 mA. So, each RGB dot has 256×256x256 = 16,777,216 colours (16 million) in theory, and it’s easy to use the 6bit correction register to calibrate the current error for each color LEDs
Power is supplied either by pin headers or via 2 sets of mini screw terminals, a slide switch selecting between the two. With the herder side, you just can use the 5V power supply, and in the terminal side, now support 6.2-7.5V power supply, more than 7V will cause the DM163 fever and more than 9V supply may burn your board. Pins brought out the edge of the board include RX, TX and DTS, which can be used to reprogram the onboard ATmega chip, and SCA and SCL for I2C communication. A green LED on the front of the board indicates power, although it is mostly obscured as soon as you plug the matrix panel in.
If you have an Arduino UNO, but just want to drive the RGB LED Matrix, you can consider this Colors shield, it's compatible with Colorduino v1.3.
Product Page:
http://iteadstudio.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=337
Colorduino Library for Arduino: Colorduino Library for Arduino – Lincomatic's DIY Blog
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