LPD-6416 LED Matrix Display

The LDP-6416 is a dual-LED, tri-colour 64 pixel by 16 pixel LED matrix display. Each pixel consists of a red and green LED (commonly referred to as 1R1G). There are 1024 pixels and 2048 individually addressable LED elements. It includes shift-register circuitry such that all 2048 LEDs can be controlled with only 10 microcontroller I/O lines. Pixels can show as black (that is, completely unlit), red, green or orange (red+green).

Note: This display doesn't refresh itself automatically - Espruino has to scan out every line manually. While Espruino can handle this fine, be aware that any calculations you do that take a long time will cause the display to flicker off.

Wiring

For the best information, see Embedded Adventures' datasheet.

You need to connect to the input header on the left-hand side of the back of the display. It'll have INPUT written on the silk-screen next to it.

Viewed from the top, the wiring is:

You must wire up VCC separately to 5V via the terminals in the middle of the display, and you just need to connect GND and all the signal wires except the no-connect (NC) ones to your Espruino. Any GPIO pins can be used.

Software

Then, you just need to initialise the module with each pin name:

var g = require("LPD6416").connect({A:B15, B:B14, C:B13, D:B10,
                                    nG:B1, L:A6, S:A5, nEN:A8, nR:A7});

A Graphics instance 64x16 pixels will be returned.

Because the display needs refreshing, rather than doing it automatically we've provided a g.scan() function which you'll have to call 50 times a second or more to avoid noticeable flicker. Ideally you would have an 'animation' loop, which calls scan after each frame of animation.

For instance:

g = require("LPD6416").connect({A:B15, B:B14, C:B13, D:B10,
                            nG:B1, L:A6, S:A5, nEN:A8, nR:A7});

function animate() {
  var t = getTime();
  g.clear();
  g.setColor(1);
  g.drawString("Hello World",32+Math.sin(t)*32,0);
  g.setColor(2);
  g.drawString("World Hello",32+Math.cos(t)*32,8);
  g.scan();
}

setInterval(animate,10);

Note: in order to get the maximum speed of updates, we haven't un-inverted the colours. This means that for g.setColor and g.setBgColor:

Using

(No tutorials are available yet)

Buying

• Embedded Adventures 4mm pitch
• Embedded Adventures 7.62mm pitch