“Make a cheap and good looking LED matrix.
Theory of LED Dot Matrix Display
In a dot matrix display, multiple LEDs are wired together in rows and columns. This is done to minimize the number of pins required to drive them. For example, a 8×8 matrix of LEDs (shown below) would need 64 I/O pins, one for each LED pixel. By wiring all the anodes together in rows (R1 through R8), and cathodes in columns (C1 through C8), the required number of I/O pins is reduced to 16. Each LED is addressed by its row and column number. In the figure below, if R4 is pulled high and C3 is pulled low, the LED in fourth row and third column will be turned on. Characters can be displayed by fast scanning of either rows or columns. This tutorial will discuss the method of column scanning.
Structure of a 8x8 LED Dot Matrix
The LED matrix used in this experiment is of size 5×7. We will learn how to display still characters in a standard 5×7 pixel format. The figure below shows which LEDs are to be turned on to display the English alphabet ‘A’. The 7 rows and 5 columns are controlled through the microcontroller pins. Now, lets see in detail how it works.
Suppose, we want to display the alphabet A. We will first select the column C1 (which means C1 is pulled low in this case), and deselect other columns by blocking their ground paths (one way of doing that is by pulling C2 through C5 pins to logic high). Now, the first column is active, and you need to turn on the LEDs in the rows R2 through R7 of this column, which can be done by applying forward bias voltages to these rows. Next, select the column C2 (and deselect all other columns), and apply forward bias to R1 and R5, and so on. Therefore, by scanning across the column quickly (> 100 times per second), and turning on the respective LEDs in each row of that column, the persistence of vision comes in to play, and we perceive the display image as still.”