my advice : build up for yourself a say 8 x 8 matrix driven from 16 I/O lines, all red. when you've got that working from a serial row / column (or parallel for that matter) address, then do a blue and green version this will allow 8 colour combinations - and a fairly short piece of code. expand the system by making them respond to different addresses - or if you fancy, have it output a serial address 8 less than the incoming one, if you get my drift. Hith outputs for row -8 and column -8, you could matrix these sub boards together and your will - and your stamina dictates. next, modify the code in the sub boards to allow a brightness signal as part of the signal, thus Rowm column, level You'll then have to write PWM code for the outputs to vary the mean power getting to the LEDs. It it a fun thing to do, and it would be nice to make a video in, control signal out type interface, but even for a 4MHz video bandwidth, a 33MHz PIC is gonna be busy. You could just inferface a PC and program messages to scroll across, this would require less bandwidth. To solve the video problem, in conjunction with the PC, you could look at MPeg encoding. Have fun, it can be done, but there's a lot or work in it. Start small, build up slowly, and let us know how it goes! ----- Original Message ----- From: Steven Rightnar To: Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2000 6:26 PM Subject: driving 1000's of leds > Hi all: > OK maybe my last post didnt make it or maybe my ?'s were blown off. I > seriously want to build this gaint computer monitor out of three different > colored leds as my pixels. I have seen huge ones biult to cover the streets > in down town Las Vegas of course these are alot bigger than the one I want > to build. So at first sight for 100000 leds I need appprox 10000+ PICs > however since I have not got a clue about how to start this could someone > please direct me... even if it is over a cliff. Thanks (flame me as needed). > > Steven >