Should I consider a career change? ("maker" blab)

[karoru]

So the guy daisychained 4 shift registers and is using micro to feed the signals. Price for the "project" = 1000 bucks. It makes me feel that instead of doing logic synthesis research I should focus on blinkenlights science - it certainly is easier and more profitable... And after I start "blinkenlight maker open source company" you could be sure that these truth tables are optimized to their heart contents;p

[miguelvp]

Do you think anyone will pay that price for just the source code and schematic?

Nah, most likely is because he got fed up with people asking for the code and schematics in the comments, but since no one reads the description they still ask for it

[Rick Law]

Besides blinking lights, you can try clocks.  Just disembody some $10 Walmart clock and you can make it look like magical high tech stuff as well.

[SL4P]

I'll see you and raise you by a few!
http://youtu.be/eewAOwAOzpw

Only 8 LEDs shown of 24 LED string.
TPIC595 drivers on a PIC16F887

[miguelvp]

@SL4P

And I'll raise you by a lot: 1024 RGB LEDs (3072 PWM channels)



Controlled by a $1 PSoC4 (green board on the right of the panel) I don't recall the framerate I could get, but it was around 60fps.

Of course the panel has it's own drivers

[SL4P]

Nice panel!  A bit more investment than our humble weekend tinkering!
What are you driving the LEDs with?
I think the OP was commenting on his software PWM - as was I
My drive is refreshing the shift registers in real time to modulate the PWM duty cycle.

[miguelvp]

It's purchased (adafruit or sparkfun, don't recall) so I didn't build it.

I did look at the board and it has at least 12 MBI5024GF (16 channel constant current LED driver)
http://belchip.by/sitedocs/00006155.pdf

That looks a lot like this TI TLC59282 chip
http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/405/tlc59282-557358.pdf

Edit: The most I could get out that PSoC4 was 8 PWMs directly from the chip, but I bet the PSoC5LP can do more.