LED Grid Display project

Peepsalot said:

i'm going to try to pulse 160mA (10mA average over time per LED), so yeah the rows will need to handle 160ma continous, and the columns will need to handle maximum pulses of 2560mA at 1/16th duty cycle.

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ok, so i misunderstood, at that current, you'll deffinately need the 2803, but that's still within the specs (160ma < 500ma)

which is the cathode, your rows or columns?

It sounds like you want to setup your 16x16 matrix a little like the circuit below? If so, you can probably use 2.7-amp PFET column drivers but I'm not sure I've ever seen "standard" 20-ma LEDs with a "peak" or "pulsed" current spec' as high as 160-ma...

Have you considered driving your 16x16 matrix as four individual 8x8 matrices? Perhaps using four '5821 row drivers and 32 PNP column drivers? The advantages would be an overall 12.5% display duty cycle and using cheapie "off-the-shelf" 600-ma 2N4403 or 800-ma PN2907A PNP column driver transistors... And it would only require a single 8-bit Port to drive the columns and three pins to drive the '5821's...

Food for thought... Have fun... Regards, Mike