Hello.
There are a lot of 7X11 LED matrixes on the market. I bought couple of them, they have cathodes from 7x side and anodes from the 11x side. The question is, since such matrixes are made, there should be some dedicated circuitry to drive it?
I know the mutliplexing options with transistors, I know about generic LED drivers like MAX7219, HT1632, TM1629A and so on. But all these are designed to drive LED matrixes in mutiple of 8 - like 8x8, 16x8, 32x16 and so on. Of course, these drivers can be also used for driving such LED matrixes, but a lot of outputs would be wasted. So maybe there is some dedicated chip for multiple 7x11 matrixes, about which I don't know?
What exactly do you mean by "matrix"?
Are we talking 7-segment, 11 digits here, or real 7 x 11 dot-matrix?
yes, 7 by 11 pixels led matrix.
Mostly used in elevators in China.
yes, 7 by 11 pixels led matrix.
Mostly used in elevators in China.
Totally depends on how the device is driven. You need to read the datasheet, or at least post a link to your product.
Yes I know all that, in fact, drivers I've mentioned are far more cheap than these.
But the question is in another thing - how to find best matching driver.
Best matching means less orphan pins and more leds driven with single chip.
Say I want to drive as much of such modules as possible with a single chip. The best combo appears to be to wire chips in 22x14 matrix, which with 24x16 capable chip, such as HT1632C or similar, will leave 'only" unused 76 outputs, which I don't want to waste.
So this is why I asked, maybe there is a dedicated solution for that specific arrangement.
The low-cost drivers often cannot supply enough current to drive a display
with many segments when you need to read the display in sunlight.
if you have a 5V microcontroller with 11 tri-state spare outputs, then you could make a charlieplexing driver
using 11 low-cost MMDT4413 NPN+PNP driver transistors and 11x 47R resistors on the common anodes or cathodes
to get a cheap 100-150mA segment current driven at 1/11 duty cycle using a 1kHz timer interrupt.
If you look on LCSC and filter on "13 segment by 7 bit", it comes up with 2 parts, AiP1612 and SM1628C. Maybe worth a look?
For the 11 anode, 7 cathode version you could probably use an ULN2003A (7 darlingtons) on the cathodes.
As for anodes, you could have mosfet or transistor arrays or shift registers to enable only particular anodes and cathodes (of course also current limiting resistors on each cathode) ... no led drivers involved
I finally found one - TM1623 and it's clones like AIP1623 and others
![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsmiley.gif.pagespeed.ic.R8GFI-pF6f.png)
Had a chance to look at elevator control board, so quickly "scanned" it for LED driver