I've been tinkering around with my Arduino lately and am thinking about trying to create a POV globe. Any suggestions on the best way to create and power a straight line of 50 or so LEDs? A matrix seems to be an effective way to control a large group of LEDs. Would it be possible to create a line, lets say 64 LEDs, but wire it as if it were an 8x8 matrix? I was able to create a 5x2 matrix using the tutorial listed on the website with some LEDs I had kicking around, but it seems like programming a "straight matrix" would be a nightmare.
I figured it'd be fairly easy to wire it, but the programming is what I was concerned about. I've seen that POV images are generally stored as binary and displayed one column at a time. Using the 64 LED example, is it possible to code it so that it acts as one column with 64 rows as opposed to 8 columns and 8 rows?
Think it would be more practical to use something like a TLC 5940 chip to rig up the LEDs individually as opposed to a matrix? I was just thinking that the fewer spinning parts I have spinning around, the better.