My First but Not Humble Robot Project

mrma

Having fun with charlieplexing

Do you remember Knight Rider? I was a big fan of the series, most notably the car named KITT. There was a red scanning light in front of the car where the grills are located. Why shouldn't my robot have one?

You have probably heard of charlieplexing. Well, to put it in a nutshell, it is driving lots of LEDs with only a few pins. To be more specific, n pins can drive n2-n LEDs. Traditional multiplexing takes many more pins to drive the same number of LEDs. I have a few 10-LED bar graph displays waiting for their turn, I can use one of them. According to the formula, I can drive 10 LED with only 4 pins.[In reality 4 pins can drive (n2-n) -> (16-4=12) twelve LEDS].

Below you will find my Arduino code for charlieplexing, also added a short video to give an idea of my "Knight Rider" light.

[PHP]//

---

// @author mrma - mrma042@gmail.com
// @copyright Copyfree 2014
// @brief Charlieplexing using 4 pins to light a 10LED bar graph array
//

---

#define SPEED 30 // the delay in ms between each LED
#define digPin1 43
#define digPin2 45
#define digPin3 47
#define digPin4 49

struct led
{
byte left;
byte right;
};

// Let's create ten pairs of pins for each single LED light
struct led leds[10] = { { digPin2, digPin1 },
{ digPin1, digPin2 },
{ digPin2, digPin4 },
{ digPin4, digPin2 },
{ digPin1, digPin4 },
{ digPin4, digPin1 },
{ digPin1, digPin3 },
{ digPin3, digPin1 },
{ digPin4, digPin3 },
{ digPin3, digPin4 } };


//

---

// Turn a single LED on but before turn off all pins to prevent misfires
//

---

void turnLEDon(int myLED) {

pinMode(digPin1, INPUT);
pinMode(digPin2, INPUT);
pinMode(digPin3, INPUT);
pinMode(digPin4, INPUT);
delay(1);

pinMode(leds[myLED].left, OUTPUT);
pinMode(leds[myLED].right, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(leds[myLED].left, HIGH);
digitalWrite(leds[myLED].right, LOW);
delay(SPEED);

}

//

---

// The setup routine runs once at startup or when you press reset
//

---

void setup() {

}

//

---

// The loop routine runs over and over again forever
//

---

void loop() {

for (int i=0; i <= 9; i++) {
turnLEDon(i);
}

for (int i=9; i >= 0; i--) {
turnLEDon(i);
}

}

[/PHP]


Here are the circuit diagram, and a graph of connections:

erco

Sweet! Everybody loves blinking LEDs & Knight Rider. Alternatively, use a 74LS154 4-to-16 decoder chip to control 16 LEDs using 4 pins. Here's one I did with a 3-to-8 decoder chip (3 lines driving 8 outputs), 7 LEDs and one 5V beeper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm8K6dI8niA & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMX5kicEoJw

mrma

To see more go to https://mypetrobot.blogspot.com.tr/