johnwasser:
The ShiftPWM library will let you control 768 LED's (256R+256G+256*B) with 32 levels of brightness and refresh fast enough to not cause major flicker.http://www.elcojacobs.com/shiftpwm/
If you want a non-matrixed display, the SPI interface on a 16 MHz Arduino can pump data at 8 million bits per second (1 million bytes per second). If you want a frame rate of 100 frames per second that gets you 10,000 bytes. If you use one of the LED driver chips that has 16 bits per LED that would allow 5,000 individual LED's (1666 each of Red, Green, and Blue). Each chip controls 16 LED's so you'd need 300 of the driver chips and they are not cheap.
Sorry, I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to any Arduino/LED/etc stuff.
About how much are the driver chips each?
I'm gunning for a main frame rate of about 24 fps. So 8 million bits per second, 24 fps gets 41,666.6667 bytes. 16 bits per LED allows 20,000 LED's right?
That'd be 6,666 of each color so a square display of about 81x81 would be possible.
Is it possible to network 2+ Arduino's together to essentially make a networked display driver?