Summary
The article explains the use of P10 LED display panels, which consist of a 32x16 matrix with 512 LEDs, for creating LED signage. It highlights the ease of use of these panels compared to older methods where individual LEDs were soldered manually. The article details the pin configuration of the P10 LED panel and describes how to interface it with an AVR ATmega8 microcontroller development board, utilizing shift register IC74HC595 and multiplexing control pins for brightness and row selection.Parts used in the P10 LED Display Interface with AVR ATmega8:
- P10 LED Display Module (32x16 Matrix)
- AVR ATmega8 Microcontroller Development Board
- IC74HC595 Shift Register
- Female-to-female jumper wires
Making LED displays and signage is a complete industry in itself serving all sorts of clients like banks, railway stations, factories, airport and more. In earlier days display units were made using individual LEDs carefully placed and soldered to make matrix of display. But this task was very mundane and slight misplacement of LED gave a ugly look to the board and chances of failure were also high. But now a days ready made panels are available that has 512 LEDs arranged in a rectangle of 32×16 matrix. They are low cost and easily available. Thanks to such LED panels making LED displays are now lot easier. Below I am introducing such a LED display panel.
P10 LED Panel 32×16 Matrix
PIN Description of P10 LED Display
This LED display module has a 16 pin FRC box header for interface. Pin configuration is shown below.
As you can see most of the pins are ground. And that should really make you happy that this display is so simple!
- EN (Enable) is used for PWM brightness control of the entire panel. That means the MCU can control the brightness by feeding a pulse width modulated signal on this pin.
- A & B are the multiplex select pins. They take binary input to select any one of the four multiplex rows.
- Shift clock, Store clock and Data are the normal shift register control pins. The shift register IC used is IC74HC595
Connection with ATmega8
We have chosen a basic AVR ATmega8 development board to do this experiment. AVR development board has all i/o pins of microcontroller available in male headers making it very easy to hook up p10 led panel to it using female to female wire.
| P10 Display | Dev Board |
|---|---|
| GND | GND |
| EN | PB0 |
| A | PD6 |
| B | PD7 |
| Shift Clock | PD4 |
| Store Clock | PD5 |
| Data | PD3 |
I have highlighted the pins used to interface in the image below so that you do not have trouble locating them.
for more detail: P10 LED Display Panel Interface with AVR ATmega8
