[Will] was toying with the concept of producing a scrolling LED marquee to screen messages as his wedding event in May. however you’ve got to crawl before you can walk so he made a decision to see what he might make with the MAX7219 LED motorist chips. They do are available in a DIP package, however the 24-pin 0.1″ pitch chip will end up being larger than the 8×8 LED modules he wished to use. So he opted to opt for a surface install part as well as spun a PCB which makes the LEDs modular.
These motorists are fantastic when you’re taking care of a great deal of LEDs (like the motorcycle helmet of lots of blinking colors). considering that they utilize SPI for communications it’s possible to chain the chips with a minimum of connections. [Will] created his board to have a male header on one side as well as a female socket on the other. Not only does it make aligning as well as connecting each block simple, however it enables you to modification your mind at any type of time about which microcontroller to utilize to command them. For his very first set of tests he plugged the male header into a breadboard as well as drove it with an Arduino. We hope to hear back from him with an update when gets the final gadget set up in time for the huge day.