What is the max number of LEDs that can be controlled individually with Arduino?
Would it be possible to give an idea/suggestions on how this can be done? ie hook up in parallel, etc
What is the max number of LEDs that can be controlled individually with Arduino?
Would it be possible to give an idea/suggestions on how this can be done? ie hook up in parallel, etc
Define "controlled".
Define "LED".
Use a ton of shift registers and controll thousands of them. The higher number of LEDs the lower update frequency. Ju make Your choice.
What is the max number of LEDs that can be controlled individually with Arduino?
Without limit.
Mind you you don't say how long you have between LED changes and how big you can get your power supply and how far apart they are physically places.
For amusement:
300 LED WS2812B strips that require one data pin to control.
A Mega
https://store.arduino.cc/usa/mega-2560-r3
has 54 digital pins.
54 pins x (let's chain at least three strips together = 300 leds x 3 strips = 900 leds) = 48,600. Lol.
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Seriously, what do you want to do?
Something like the attached.
I just bought the Arduino starter kit so I'm learning circuits and LEDs from level 0. (I know how to code though).
I guess I should clarify my question: what do I need to learn/know in order to be able to make something like this?
user7889:
Something like the attached.what do I need to learn/know in order to be able to make something like this?
Don't see anything.
I have an Arduino connected to a 128x64 OLED - that's 8192 LEDs. (0.96inch diagonal)
An arduino UNO has 13 -2 digital +6 analog/digital. so direct is about 17, however the current will be too high when all leds are ON.
another way is to have them in a sequence or in a matrix.
OPs image...
That LED wall looks like it is about 40 LEDs high by about 60 LEDs wide.
Here is a guy who did a 24 by 6 matrix.
https://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-24X6-LED-matrix/ so you can see what kind of soldering would be involved if you didn't buy premade strips.
And here is a thread (from here) on the feasibility of a 2400 LED matrix.
https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=70969.0
I was kidding earlier, but 40 60 LED WS2812B strips might be the way to go.
shooter:
An arduino UNO has 13 -2 digital +6 analog/digital. so direct is about 17, however the current will be too high when all leds are ON.
Controlling LEDs is a different thing to powering leds. Microcontrollers are not designed to power anything, so it's no surprise they cannot power many LEDs. But they can control thousands to millions of LEDs.
@user7889, how many LEDs in that piece? I guess the easiest way would be to use led strips with built-in controllers. I think you can get these strips where the LEDs are white and each driver chip controls 3 LEDs.
Ok guys, I have to read through all your responses and digest it before I come up with follow-up questions.
Think it's clear to me I need to start with smaller projects first to get the basics down. Holy cow, have I got a lot to learn!
Thanks for the links and responses, hope I can come back in a few days with good questions!
if you look at any LCD panel, there is a driver chip that controls individual LED's on that display, what is 320 x 320 ? over 100 thousand ?
and it can play a movie.
if you look at that wall, it looks like it is black and white ?
different brightness ?
if you look at the moving billboards and score boards in stadiums, they use multiple smaller panels
what you really want is to find an LED driver that will power the LED's and then have the Arduino send the data to the driver.
but the next question is if your Arduino has the room for the picture(s) you want to display
I just googled LED drivers. So if I understand this correctly, each LCD panel should come with a driver which you will connect to whatever PCB/controller I am using and the driver will control the amount of electricity being fed to the LCD panel.
So basically it acts in place of the resistors that I would be using on an Arduino board for each LED light I would have connected to the power supply?
Are there other functions of the LED driver?
There seems to be some confusion between LCD and LED on this thread. Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) do not make any of their own light, each pixel can only block or not block light, but that light must be provided by a backlight or reflected light. Often the backlight is an LED. For large panels like TV & monitors, the backlight used to be florescent tubes, but later replaced by an LED array. In today's large TV sets the LED backlight matrix is animated to improve the appearance of the display, so these became known as "LED TVs" even though the picture is still created by an LCD panel.
Looks like you want to make this project
https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/projects.html
A huge 12800 LED screen showing graphics sychronized to music.
I suggest reading the following for background information on one type of commonly used RGB LED.
Just learned something new, awesome!!
30 years ago I experimented in multiplexing LEDs. An LED, at that time having a nominal current of 20 mA, was boosted with 7 amperes! The voltage across the LED was 7 volt, not the nominal 2,5. 49 Watt! OK, the length of the pulse was one microsecond and the dutycycle was one second. Using fast hardware support and a heavy power supply You could run some 100 000 LEDs.
The frequency of changing the setup for the LED powering…. Just test what You can achieve.