Im wanting to output to 100 LEDS (a present for someone that I want to flash with nice patterns and whatnot). I have searched around and found I need a few 74HC595 chips (ordered!) as reccomended at arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftOut
What solutions do people have for organising the wiring for so many components?, I can see myself turning out a working product but as a mass of tangled wires.
I was wondering what the two boards (centre and left) in this pic are called as it looks ideal for keeping things relatively tidy: arduino.cc/en/uploads/Tutorial/ShftOutExmp1_1.gif
Also any book suggestions/general advice welcome, this is my first project and I am learning
Generally such many components are arranged in a matrix, which has the advantage of reducing the number of wires to 20 in your case, and the disadvantage that the needed multiplexing will reduce the brightness of the LEDs considerably and noticeably.
However you should learn this technique. I should guess there are 200 threads even in this very forum discussing aspects of matrix multiplexing.
Such devices can also be purchased readily and unexpensively in sizes of 5x8 8x8 and multiples.
However you are by no means forced to geometrically arrange this as a matrix. The matrix is only the wiring concept!
Though a square arrangement is optimal, it can be advantageous to have other (logical) layouts, as 6x16 in your case: you address 16 line by 2 shift registers and 6 lines directly from the Arduino.
If you addressed all LEDs separately you would need 100x20mA = 2A in the worst case...
You might also want to look for drivers as ULN2803.
You might also like to look into the use of a more advanced LED driver/controller....
I was wondering what the two boards (centre and left) in this pic are called
They are known as 'solder-less bread board' and are good for trying things out. However I would not recommend them for a large project. You need soldered connections for reliability. With a large project you are always going to end up with a "mess of wires" because you have a lot of things to wire up and you want the wires as short as possible.
Use strip board or perforated board for prototypes, they have served me well for the past 40 years and there is nothing to beat them for general purpose prototyping.
Also if you want to make the wiring neat the the "vero wire" system is a great way for keeping things from sprawling out. http://www.verotl.com/vero-wire
