Form-factor shield design is ideal for anyone developing display applications

Maxim MAXREFDES99 Display Driver Shield, available from Mouser, is an Arduino form-factor shield which drives a 16x16 LED array for signage applications. This design is ideal for anyone developing a display applications. The board features Maxim’s MAX7219, a well-know LED driver that simplifies the process of controlling multiple LEDs in matrix or numeric display form. In the device, four MAX7219 ICs are daisy chained to drive a full 256-LED array, which can display any international alpha numeric symbol. The board comes complete with four 8x8 LED displays. The code for the device is available on both Arduino and ARM mbed platforms for quick prototyping with multiple platform boards. System demonstrations include the display of ASCII characters ‘SPACE’ through ‘~’ and writing/scrolling string messages.