nurquhar
Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 149 Location: Redditch, UK
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Can a PIC be used to drive MAX6974/5 PWM LED Chips ? |
Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 12:57 am |
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I am looking at a project where I need to drive 4160 RGB LED's, not a video application. I have found a neet chip from maxim called the MAX6974/5 which can drive 8 RGB leds. You can cascade upto 1820 chips. See http://www.maxim-ic.com/quick_view2.cfm/qv_pk/4514. If you clock data to the chips at 31Mhz you can achive a 60 frame per sec rate.
The drawback is that clocked serial data format required from the host does not appear to be SPI or UART compatible. You could use a software bit bang to send the clocked data but even with a high end PIC it seems unlikely that Mhz type data rates would be achievable.
Can anyone think of a way of constructing a hardware interface using either an on chip peripherial or external hardware ? Would I need a PIC24/PIC32 or do I to open an ARM7/9 can of worms ? |
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