Microcontroller Based Dynamic Display using LED..

Here we describe a microcontroller-based dynamic display system using LED strip that can be used for advertising message display. The display works by flashing characters sequentially and then the entire text together. Different lighting effects are possible, like flashing in zig-zag, increasing, decreasing and random patterns.Surface-mount device (SMD) LEDs are becoming popular because of their low power consumption and high brightness. These LEDs are readily available in the market in many colours both as single LEDs and LED strips.

LED strip
An LED strip is made up of a number of SMD LEDs affixed to a PCB surface. LED strips are mainly of two types—flexible and rigid. These come in different lengths and light outputs.

Circuit for microcontroller based dynamic display using LED strip

The type of LED strip can be selected as per the desired application:

Bare strip. This LED strip is ideal for indoor (inside or under cupboards and stairs) and indirect lighting applications.

Silicon-covered strip. This LED strip is suitable for use in humid places like bathrooms and for outdoor use (accent lighting in houses and buildings).

Silicon-sleeved LED strip. This strip is fully encapsulated by a silicon sleeve and is suitable for use in swimming pools, saunas and outdoors where direct contact with rain or water is unavoidable.

The LED strip has in-built series dropper resistors and works off +12V, 400mA DC supply. It can be cut or trimmed to a smaller size of about 5 cm in length, and pasted on any flat surface (LED strips come with a self-sticking gum). In this dynamic display, we have cut the LED strip to form the word ‘EFY’.

Circuit description

Fig. 1 shows the circuit for microcontroller-based dynamic display using LED strip while its power supply is shown in Fig. 2. It comprises microcontroller AT89C51 (IC1), octal peripheral driver array ULN2803 (IC2, IC3, IC4 and IC5), regulator IC 7805 (IC6) and a few discrete components.

Microcontroller AT89C51 is at the heart of the circuit. It is an 8-bit micro-controller with 4 kB of Flash programmable and eras-able read-only memory (PER-OM), 128 bytes of RAM, 32 input/output (I/O) lines, two 16-bit timers/counters, a five-vector two-level interrupt architecture, a full-duplex serial port, on-chip oscillator and clock circuitry.

power supply

Ports 1, 2 and 3 of the microcontroller are 8-bit bidirectional I/O ports with internal pull-ups but port 0 is an 8-bit open-drain bidirectional I/O port. Therefore port 0 is pulled up by resistor network RNW1. Port pins P0.0 through P0.7 of the microcontroller are connected to input pins 1 through 8 of IC2, respectively. Similarly, pins of ports 1, 2 and 3 are connected to input pins of IC3 through IC5, respectively, without pull-up resistors.

ULN2803 is a monolithic, high-voltage and high-current Darlington transistor array. It consists of eight npn Darlington pairs that have high-voltage outputs with common-cathode clamp diode for switching inductive loads. The collector-current rating of a single Darlington pair is 500 mA. ULN2803 has a 2.7-kilo-ohm base resistor for each Darlington pair to connect directly with the transistor-transistor logic (TTL) or complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices.

LED strips are connected to output pins 11 through 18 of the ULN2803 ICs. The microcontroller drives the LED strips through ULN2803 according to the source program.

Power-on reset for the microcontroller is provided by the combination of resistor R1 and capacitor C1. Switch S1 is used for manual reset. A 12MHz crystal along with two 33pF capacitors connected between pins 18 and 19 provides the basic clock frequency to microcontroller AT89C51.

Fig. 2 shows the circuit for power supply. The 230V AC mains is stepped down by transformer X1 to deliver a secondary output of 12V, 5A. The transformer output is rectified by full-wave bridge rectifier BR1, filtered by capacitor C4 and regulated by IC 7805. Capacitor C5 bypasses the ripples, if any, present in the regulated supply. LED1 acts as the power indicator and R2 limits the current through LED1. Regulated 5V DC supply is used for the microcontroller section. Unregulated supply (12V) is used for the LED strips and ULN2803 ICs.

Software

The source program (strip.c) for microcontroller-based dynamic display using LED strip is written in ‘C’ language. It is compiled using the Keil µVision4 compiler to generate the hex code. The generated hex code is burnt into the microcontroller using a suitable programmer.

The source program allows for lighting effects like flashing in zig-zag, increasing, decreasing and random patterns. Different delay combinations make the lighting effect more attractive. Function rand( ) is used to generate the random lighting effects.

Click for Source Code