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“In this post you will find the description of a graphic display that uses a modular solution based on dot matrix blocks (in which each dot is a RGB LED), that are driven – via a specific bus – by a very powerful control board, that is entirely programmable and capable of managing even very fast animations, thanks to the FPGA it is supplied with. Yes, the key factor is the Spartan-6 Field Programmable Gate Array by Xilinx, that is able to execute programs at very high speed, thanks to its parallel processing capability (multi-thread); the model that has been used in the project was chosen because it represents the most performing FPGA available on the market as a TQFP package, therefore it may still be soldered by means of the traditional tools. In order to create our modular display we are using a control board that will be described in the next pages; actually it is not limited to the said application, but it’s a generic and very powerful and versatile controller, whose advantages and the usage possibilities you will understand better in the next paragraphs and in the future articles. The displaying part is on the other hand composed by RGB LED dot matrices supplied with a shift-register; the whole will enable the management of a giant display with a 320×240 pixels resolution, each pixel is characterized by a 256-colour True Color definition at a 25 Hz refresh frequency, that is more than enough to show flicker-free moving pictures.”

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