hi i was just wondering im starting a big project using the arduino and 50 x tlc5940, and each tlc operates 4 x RGB leds and 4 x white, we have got 4 test chips made up and they work fine for one pattern but as soon as we want more patterns it looses memory. we worked out we need about 2mb of memory. we also looked at using a sd card for it but its to slow to run the patterns. the only other thing i can think of is using a linux box but a really small one like the Linuxstamp http://www.opencircuits.com/Linuxstamp or is there any other way we can do this? is there a atmega chip with a larger memory ?
That Linuxstamp board looks like a good choice, based on the specs. I dunno how good it is in practice, since I haven't used one.
I've used the Netburner SB-72 as an embedded controller, and it's quite nice. It's a little I/O poor, but I think you could use its QSPI to drive the TLC5940s. But it doesn't have the mass storage interface, so display data would have to be constantly reloaded via Ethernet. If you have a lot of canned patterns to be displayed, that's a big drawback.
I've heard good things about the Rabbit modules, but they appear to be a little short on RAM for your needs.
i was hoping for an easy way of doing it like the sd card but, its just not going to be that easy. Both the net burner and Rabit modules are short on memory and rabit can use the Ethernet but its just going to be to slow. And i want to stay clear of using an actual computer.
I was just looking around, would i be able to use EEPROM or serial ram to expand the memory remember i need about 2mb, is there anything that can run off TX, RX ?
some patterns will be as fast as 15fps so it has to read fast thats why SD card wont work. Im using the atmega328 so should be enough processing power.