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5x7 led matrix drivers — Parallax Forums

5x7 led matrix drivers

nick bernardnick bernard Posts: 329
edited 2013-04-16 09:40 in General Discussion
hail,
can anyone recommend a good 5x7 led matrix driver.

Comments

  • Jon WilliamsJon Williams Posts: 6,491
    edited 2004-11-01 19:57
    You can drive a 5x7 LED matrix with the MAX7219, but it's expensive. I've been doing LED multiplexing with the SX chip lately; it's a lot cheaper.

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    Jon Williams
    Applications Engineer, Parallax
    Dallas Office
  • steve_bsteve_b Posts: 1,563
    edited 2004-11-02 14:43
    by the SX chip...you do not mean the BS2sx, do you?

    or are you just referring to the SX chip itself (ubicom??)?



    Are these fancy shmancy pics?·

    honestly haven't even looked at them.

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    ·

    Steve
    http://members.rogers.com/steve.brady
    http://www.geocities.com/paulsopenstage

    "Inside each and every one of us is our one, true authentic swing. Something we was born with. Something that's ours and ours alone. Something that can't be learned... something that's got to be remembered."
  • Jon WilliamsJon Williams Posts: 6,491
    edited 2004-11-02 18:21
    I mean the SX28AC/DP -- an now I'm happily programming it in SX/B (PBASIC-like language for the SX). SX/B supports interrupts and I have used this fact to create a virtual LED driver for a couple projects. You can see those in the SX/B help file that can be downloaded from that the SX/SXB forum.

    The SX has a similar architecture other micros, though I wouldn't call them schmacy; in fact, they're somewhat spartan. But the are very fast (one instruction per cycle) and allow for the creation of virtual devices when needed.

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    Jon Williams
    Applications Engineer, Parallax
    Dallas Office
  • nick bernardnick bernard Posts: 329
    edited 2004-11-02 21:17
    how involved is this flavor of microcontroller-
    what are the startup costs?
    what external devices are necessary for the sx chip?
    i like dips; is it a dip?
    how fast?
    how cheap?


    thx
    nick
  • Jon WilliamsJon Williams Posts: 6,491
    edited 2004-11-02 22:16
    The Internet is your friend; all the answers can be found at the Parallax SX Page.

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    Jon Williams
    Applications Engineer, Parallax
    Dallas Office
  • samwellsamwell Posts: 1
    edited 2013-04-15 08:17
    LucidTronix has a tutorial for driving two 5 x 7 LED Matrix displays using shift registers. It only requires 3 pins from a micro-controller: http://lucidtronix.com/tutorials/18
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-04-15 09:56
    Startup costs for the SX chip are a programing device called an SXKey or and SXBlitz. Since the chips are EOL, they are quite reasonably priced. Support through www.SXlist.com may be helpful. Available in DIP.

    Essentially the SX28 chips are a refined PIC.. more speed and better generic features. You could use a PIC for a 5x7 LED driver as well. That would require a PIC programer and take you in a direction that might be a bit more demanding.

    The nicest thing about the SXes are that Parallax provided some good free tutorial material and SX/B for programing. You can also program in assembly language.

    http://www.parallax.com/tabid/138/List/0/CategoryID/15/Level/a/SortField/0/Default.aspx
  • davejamesdavejames Posts: 4,047
    edited 2013-04-15 11:13
    Good input, but...um, the original thread is over 8 years old.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-04-16 09:40
    I am at a complete loss as to how this thread suddenly appeared to become active again. But the SX chips are still very handy to use as an adjunct to the Propeller... especially for i/o such as 10 key input and LED matrix output. Both of these applications can be done without even adding an external crystal if SPI communications is used.
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