Best Scrolling LED Text MCU Circuit?

[keny]

Hey I have had great successes here with a few projects of mine, thanks to everyone's help. I am starting to standardize my LED signage project to a point where I want to make one card that will apply to many many signs. I want it to be able to drive ~200 LED's. Instead of a text scroller I have different "Zones" but it still operates under the principle of an LED Matrix. I have seen a few circuits and am looking for the one that resonates as one of the better, more reliable circuits.

I am thinking along the lines of a series of 74HC595's and a MCU, I also want to have PWM control of the LED intensity. Can you think of a successful project example I could use to cut my teeth on? I am trying to roll something out pretty soon, so I'd rather hear some testimony of which one to use as opposed to ordering the wrong parts 2 or 3 times.

Cheers,
Keny

 

[mneary]

Do you intend to control the LED intensity individually or just brighten/dim the entire display?

 

[keny]

i'm down with the entire display.

 

[keny]

I may have a later issue of dealing with the different intensity curves of different colored LED's. I've had that problem in the past.

My current design uses 113 LED's with the following specs:

48 5 mm Wht Vf 2.8 -3.4 (at 20ma)
39 5 mm Blue Vf 2.8 -3.4 (at 20ma)
20 5 mm Yellow Vf-1.8 -2.4, (at 20ma
1 10 mm Wht 3 - 3.6 -@20mA
1 10 mm Grn Vf 3 - 3.6 - @20mA
4 10 mm Red Vf 2 - 2.5 - @20mA

i plan to use MPLab with some applicable version of C. My last project was PIC18F's i think i dont need all that, but then again I have a system (and software) that works for that. I want to install a lot of display programs in the device, perhaps 10 - 20, so I would like a little bit of memory which to do such.