Christmas LED Display for Various Images

The project is an 8×16 pixel array built with ATtiny861 microcontroller which can show various images and be displayed in a window to provide eye catching display to passersby.

The main component of the hardware is the ATtiny861 microcontroller which runs at 20MHz. In order for the microcontroller to dim the LEDs without any visible flickering, the speed should be fast enough. A vertical row of 16 LEDs are driven by each of the eight A6276 driver ICs from Allegro Microsystems. Since there is no internal regulator needed on the circuit board, a regulated 5V wall pack can be used to run the board.

A total of 128 LEDs is contained in the circuit which results to building up 3 boards. The mixture of blue and white LEDs are in the first board, all blue LEDs in the second board, and all white LEDs were built up in the third board. The white LED board went into a transparent enclosure while the blue LED board went into a semi-transparent blue enclosure. Near the center of the board is the huge block of DIP ICs which serve as the driver chips for LEDs.

Rest of the project