Forum Discussion

Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
17 years ago

Electronics Newbie question concerning LEDs

Hi all, I am an electronics newbie, and I am trying to design an guitar that has a light up fretboard. To do this I need to control about 120 individual, single color LEDs, and I am having trouble...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
17 years ago

I guess you could use a Cyclone part to drive 120 LEDs. The current consumption might be quite high. 120 * say 20mA.

A better way might be to somehow strobe the LEDs so they are not all on at the same time.

For example, if your LED matrix is 6 rows by 20 you could light just 6 LEDS at a time then move on to the next 6 LEDs.

If you strobe fast enough the LEDs should look like they are all on simultaneously!

You would then only need 20 + 6 Output pins but would probably need to add external buffers to beef up the drive.

Hope this is of some help