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 Posted: Feb 22, 2012 - 06:36 PM |
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Joined: May 24, 2006
Posts: 196
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| Can someone recommend a driver that I can connect to a serial bus and drive 8 LED's? I do not have enough control lines to do this individually so I want to send a group of 8 bits over SPI, drive a chip select, and turn on some LEDs. |
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Posted: Feb 22, 2012 - 06:48 PM |
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Joined: Dec 11, 2007
Posts: 6841
Location: Cleveland, OH
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I take it the Main Processor is a bit of a distance from the 8 LEDs, and the 8 LEDs are all together?
Or are the LEDs distributed along a physically lengthy bus?
Are you talking about typical display panel LEDs, maybe running on 2 mA or 10 mA per LED, or some high powered LEDs?
Although there are MANY LED driver chips out their these days, from all of the major manufacturers, one could certainly just use an AVR-Tiny to do this. Program it as an SPI Slave, and hook the LEDs up to the I/O pins, (with serial resistors...).
Do you need the distant site, with the LEDs, to report back that it got the message and turned on the correct LEDs, (medical instrument control panel, for example), or is one way communications acceptable for this application?
If one way comm's is all that is needed, then one could use a USART with the Main Controller just transmitting data on one signal line to the Remote, and a commmon ground connection, using even fewer lines than the SPI interface.
To answer your question: Start by having a look at National Semiconductor, Analog Devices, and Linear Technology for their LED drivers. Many others exist.
JC |
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Posted: Feb 22, 2012 - 07:19 PM |
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Joined: May 24, 2004
Posts: 5994
Location: Tampere, Finland
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Posted: Feb 23, 2012 - 05:48 AM |
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Joined: Apr 20, 2007
Posts: 6061
Location: Long Island New York
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| Maxim semiconductor has many that can fit the bill as well. Free samples too! |
_________________
Jim
I have decided that I am no longer going to plan anything in advance. In a court of law this is called Pre-Meditated, and does not look good for the defense.....
Timer function not working properly? Check CLKDIV8 Fuse first 
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