Does anybody no if there is a led controller like the MAX7219 were the wires to en from the Arduino pins and from led controller to led controller pins can be longer.
My displays are 1 till 3 meters apart.
So there only 5 wires and not 16 wires to connect.
Tricky, why not move the Arduino next to the display.
Failing that you need to add some driver IC to one end and some reciever ICs to the other. Also you could try and look at differential drivers. That is where one line is driven high while the other is driven low and the connection is made through twisted pair cables. Look for RS485 drivers in the component catalogues, there are lots of them all very much the same.
Thanks, no easy solution for my then.
Hi wilfred,
the Phillips SAA1064 is a LedDriver that supports a matrix of 4x8 leds. It uses the I²C-Bus (supported by the Wire-Lib on the arduino).
A cable of 3m between the Arduino and the SAA1064 should be possible since the I²C-Bus provides at least some basic error-checking capabilities.
Eberhard
Could you use an additional Arduino as the LED driver directly? Use 16 IO pins to directly drive the 8x8 matrix, and you still have 4 pins left for serial communication. That leaves you free to use a simple serial protocol that will work easily over 3 meters.
Considering the ATmega168 is so much cheaper than the MAX7219, I've wondered why this technique isn't more common, though there is the constant current drive for each LED to deal with which the 7219 takes care of.
This is my project climbing wall with illuminated climbing holds