LED Painter – RGB Lighting System

This LED Painter system looks like it works very well. If you want your living-room to groove this may be the ticket for you. It is using a chip by TI that I have never heard about before, I can see the TLC5940 being incorporated in many products and DIY projects.

"The LED Painter is a 16 channel RGB LED controller (or 48 independent LEDs) using the Texas Instrument TLC5940. This PCB is improved with a better layout that allows easy connection of independent LEDs (not just RGB), as well as the ability to daisy chain multiple boards together. The TLC5940 IC is implemented in this design because it is easy to use and can be controlled with a variety of microcontrollers. Each TLC5940 has 16 channels with 12 bit grayscale PWM control on each channel. Your microcontroller will connect to the TLC5940 using only a couple of pins and a serial like interface for controlling the intensity of each channel."