Colors Shield

Overview

The Colors shield can directly plug on the Arduino board, and hook up with the RGB LED matrix, you can use the Arduino to drive the matrix like the Colorduino/Rainbowduino. The code of Colors shield is the same as Colorduino.

The Colors shield can be plug into the Arduino UNO/Duemilanove, so the controller is based on ATMega 168P/328P, the same as Rainbowduino. This design is to make user easily modify or write the firmware of Colorduino by Arduino IDE. But in order to better drive the RGB matrix and reach their best performance, we use the professional LED driver chip, and this chip comprises shift registers, data latches, 8×3 channel constant current and 64 x 256 gray level PWM for per color! Each channel provide a maximum current of 60 mA.

Each RGB dot has 160K colors in theory, and it’s easy to use the 6bit correction register to calibrate the current error for each color LEDs – we don’t think that Rainbowduino use an adjustable resistors to calibrate the current error is a good idea, because just 1 lap the resistor change from 0R to1K , you cannot get the exact value you need, but now, you have a 6bit software value to correct it.

Features

• 8bits colors support with 6bits correction for each color in every dots
• Hardware 16MHz PWM support
• Without any external circuits, play and shine!
• 24 constant current channels of 100mA each
• 8 super source driver channels of 500mA each

Specifications

PCB size	60mm X 60mm X 1.6mm
Indicators	PWR State
Power supply	5V DC
IO	13
RoSH	Yes

Electrical Characteristics

Parameter	Min.	Typical	Max.	Unit
Power voltage	4.5	5	5.5	VDC
Input voltage VinH (Target Voltage = 3.3V)	3	3.3	3.6	V
Input voltage VinH (Target Voltage = 5V)	4.5	5	5.5	V
Input voltage VinL	-0.3	0	0.5	V
Current Consumption (Except LED matrix)	-	20	40	mA
Drive current (Every channel)			500	mA
Drive current (Every dot)			58	mA