Controlling 1600 individual RGB common cathode LEDs using Arduino

Using Arduino LEDs and Multiplexing
1

Hello,

I am working on a project that warrants the control of 1600 individual common cathode RGB LED lights. I have an Arduino UNO and Arduino YUN board. I was wondering if there is a way to individually control these lights using many shift registers or any other application possible. If arduino isn't a viable option for controlling this many LEDs individually is there a good place to start with this type of application?

Let me know if you need any more information regarding the set up of this project.

2

Just discussing that here
https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=347780.msg2398379
For that many LEDs tho, WS2812B might be better choice, as they can be daisychained and serial data blasted out to control them.
Browse neopixel at adafruit.com for a library to control them.

WS2812B.pdf (381 KB)

3

If you don't want the built in RGB LED, then WS2801 or WS2811, similar controllers but needing separate RGB LED, can be used.

WS2801.pdf (423 KB)

WS2811-preliminary.pdf (320 KB)

4

The link is broken could you please give me the title of the topic so I may look it over?

5

Lets say I already bought the 1600 LEDs (not saying I actually did) is there a way to control them individually? I understand the idea that is being posed above but I just want to see if there was a way because the grid lay out is 40x40 and I wanted to control them individually

6

This is a typical beginners mistake wanting to scale up to something silly before you know the basics. Yes it can be done, no it is not easy. It is hard to scale up a circuit because all sorts of secondary effects become important and you don't even know the primary ones.

Your only practical hope is to use the LEDs that CrossRoads pointed you towards. Even though you are making ridiculous demands on a power supply for this design. You will need your Yun as the Uno has not got enough memory to store that much data for each LED.

7

Thanks both of you even if Grumpy_Mike was not exactly nice about a new person trying to learn...

8

Link is not "broken", the forum just added extra characters to it.
Try it again
https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=347786.0

9

Darn it. Well, just manually copy & paste and clean up the front of the link. Looks like xtra https:// is getting stuck on, I can't see to get rid of it in the forum.