16x32 LED RGB wall advice

Using Arduino LEDs and Multiplexing
1

Im currently working on a RGB LED wall thats gonna run with a custom board with a bootloaded ATMega2560 on it.

Originally i was gonna use a ATMega328 to run the wall, but ran into the issue that it would have very little SRAM left after creating a full image. This was pointed out to me by the folks over at /r/arduino, which made me chose to go with the ATMega2560 instead.

Some people also pointed aut that a Arduino DUE would be a very good choice for the obvious reasons that its a lot faster, have more memory, and larger ports for faster pin handling.

The reason i want to stay with the ATMega series of processors is because i want to be able to remotely program the wall so i dont have to take it af the wall everytime i want to program, or run a really long USB cable across my apartment.

For the wireless programming i am planning to be using the Bluefruit EZ-Link from adafruit which was made for this purpose.

This is the main reason that is keeping me from using the due instead since i can get hold of one for a very low cost.

so my concerns are in the end, is the ATMega2560 gonna be powerfull enough for the running the wall with PWM controllers, and is the a way i am just unable to find that doest cost 600 dollars to program a Arduino DUE remotely (The 600 dollars is wireless USB (mostly a dead solution, but still out there))

2

Can look into Atmega1284P also, 16K of SRAM, stay in theArduino IDE.
32 IO, dual hardware serial, the adafruit bluetooth will talk to 1284P just fine.
I make several form factors of 1284P based boards, an example below, and Jack Christensen has been spearheading 1284P cleanup in the IDE.
http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=235521
http://www.crossroadsfencing.com/BobuinoRev17/

1047×813 153 KB

3

The ATMega1284 does look like a alternative, being cheaper and easier to solder, though i does have to few pins available, but that i can always just fix with a logic multiplexer, will look into using this chip instead, the larger SRAM size is really neat.

Thank you for the advice :slight_smile: Much appreciated

4

Hi Simmerly,

Have you considered Teensy 3.1? Or perhaps Spark Core?

I doubt the number of pins that an atmega1284/2560 vs. 328 is relevant. Your display will probably use SPI bus anyway. The limiting factor for '328 would be ram as you say, but another may be spi speed. The '1280 & '2560 are no faster than the '328 in that respect. Have you worked out how many bytes per second will be needed?

Paul

5

Finally succeeded to modified Adafruit RGB panel library for 16x32 rgb panel to suit arduino due.