is it possible to controlle 3000 LED with arduino?

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

Hi,

I'm interested to create big scoreboard like 50 x 60 LEDs.
Is anybody knows the way to controll 3000 LEDs with Arduino? Is it possible??
Thank you.

2

probably, with some work, you could connect a lot of multiplexed LED driver chips. but.. driving 3000 leds will probably cost you $1000 in materials, so you might want to look at ready-made LED modules designed for such a purpose, as the price might be similar.

D

3

Thank you Daniel2.

I'll try with some shift registers and led driver chip. (to lerning about shift registers and arduino :D)
Actuary I don't much care about cost for now.

thanks.

4

Shiftregisters can control 8 (or 16 ?) LED's with 3000 LED's you would need 375 (or 188) shiftregisters. They would take up a lot of space, use a lot of power, and serially shifting 8 or 16 bits of data through so many shiftregisters will with almost 100% certaincy give you serious propagation delays.

I think that you need to take a very modular approach on this project. Somthing lie this :

http://moderndevice.com/8X8display.shtmlSomthing lie this :

But i still think that the advice to find a ready-made LED modules designed for such a purpose would save you both mony and time and lots of hard work.

5

hummm,,
Thank you in advice MikMo.

I'm try smaller one for test first.
30 x 30 LED with dynamic-controll, it'll need just 4 16bit shiftregisters right??

6

Tip: Stick to powers of 2. So 32x32 not 30x30.
Its got to do with the way computers think.

A single Arduino can power that many LEDs but it would be very slow.
A better idea is to have one ATmega chip per block of LEDs. Say one per 16x16 block.
That gets around the speed issues. You use a 'master' chip to communicate higher level instructions to the slave chips.

Definitely go modular as well. Say one module per controller chip.
This makes it far easier to build and test.
Also you'll be wanting to design your own PCB for it. Any other way is suicide.