controlling multiple led lamps

Projects General Guidance
1

I want to make some LED lamps that are controlled by tlc5940 chips. The challenge is to synchronize them together from a master arduino located in a larger centerpiece and have 6 lamps surround it in a star topology anywhere from 8-20ft from the centerpiece.

  1. Could I just run the tlc5940 signal lines to each lamp? or would the distance of >10ft degrade the signal too much?
  2. put an arduino inside each lamp and connect all arduino's with the spi bus and have the master send out commands to six slaves.

I figured I would use cat5e for the spi lines or the tlc5940 signal lines but if there is a better alternative let me know.

I've got the tlc5940 code down pretty good but I have yet to network arduino's together or mess with any spi code.

2
  1. Could I just run the tlc5940 signal lines to each lamp? or would the distance of >10ft degrade the signal too much?
  2. put an arduino inside each lamp and connect all arduino's with the spi bus and have the master send out commands to six slaves.
  1. Best bet is to try it and see as it won't cost anything to do so. Might need to slow the SPI clock speed to be reliable.
  2. Maybe you could use something like MAX232 chips on the SPI CLK/DATA lines at each end to extend the distance of the SPI and save expense of extra Arduino's.