LED chandelier

[Jamh]

I would like to build a fancy chandelier that floats over our dining room table, made of LED lights, perhaps each LED light suspended by its own wire to make the whole thing like a flattened cube.

Anyone has any suggestion wrt the controlling circuit? I'd like to change the intensity of the lights, and turn them on/off based on some patterns.

One thought is to have the lights controlled from an old laptop that I have through its serial interface to the controlling circuit and supply it with a matrix of data, so that if there are 10x7x4 LEDs the matrix will look like:
v(0,0,0) = 0
v(0,0,1) = 2
v(0,0,2) = 1
...
v(10,7,3) = 3
v(10,7,4) = 0

Where do I get that many LEDs for cheap?

[Geek]

Hi,

Originally posted by Jamh
Where do I get that many LEDs for cheap?

Ebay would be your best bet.

We made a list recently of reliable sellers of hobby stuff. Can't remember the thread off the top of my head though

Cheers!

[I_Forgot]

I'd probably set up four matrix driver boards, one for each 10 x 7 matrix. Then wire the LEDs so that they are addressed by specific row and column drivers. You PC program will have to address the four matrices (your z coordinate) and the specific LEDs you want turned on/off (your x, y coordinates).

I would use PICs for the matrix drivers, unless there is an off-the-shelf LED matrix driver that can do the job, and there probably is if you search long enough.

There's going to be a LOT of wiring to address that many LEDs.

I_F

[Jamh]

Thanks!

This is direction I'm headed:
http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/electronics/LED_matrix/

[I_Forgot]

Originally posted by Jamh
Thanks!

This is direction I'm headed:
http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/electronics/LED_matrix/

That's a bit dated! You can definitely do better with modern parts. Use high pin count PICs or smaller PICs plus power shift register chips such as the TPIC6C596.

I think you can drive a 10x7 array of LEDs using a PIC with 28 pins, but there are some thermal considerations that limit the number of LEDs can be on at the same time.

I_F