Introduction: LED Matrix Test 1 Using an AS1107 IC

By Michael McRoberts
About: Hi, my name is Mike and I am from London, England. I really like to make things and in particular like to do creative things with Arduinos and electronics. Other hobbies include astrophotography and sailing. C…

Got hold of some AS1107 LED Driver Chips from Austria Microsystems. These are designed for driving 8 x 8 segment LED numerical displays. They can also be used for controlling an 8x8 LED Matrix. Only 3 outputs are needed from the Boarduino (Arduino) - Clock, Data and Latch. There is absolutely zero examples on the internet of this IC being used and no code examples or libraries at all so I had to read the datasheet, work it out for myself and write all the code myself. This is the first time I have ever worked out how to control an IC from its datasheet so I am very proud of myself for doing what you see above in only a few hours.

Only one chip is needed to control the Matrix and NO MULTIPLEXING is required as the chip does all that for you!!! After you work out how the chip works it is pretty easy to code for. The video shows 3 functions I wrote for the matrix. One is the point function that turns an LED on at location x,y. Also Spiral which is an animation routine to draw a spiral with x millisecond delay inbetween frames. Also, the clearDisplay function and the scrollLeft function that scrolls the text left.

I have also tidied up the font and the font spacing since the previous tests.

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