LEDancer

General

The LEDancer (Le Dancer) is an inexpensive controller for up to 56 LEDs with a DMX512 input interface. The LEDs are connected together in a Charlie-Plexed common-cathode configuration. The design needs to use 2N3906 booster transistors for the LED cathodes to ensure that the low-level drive of the PIC is not exceeded, a configuration sometimes called chipi-plexing. The DMX address of the controller can be changed by shunting one of the PIC pins to ground and then sending a specially formatted DMX packet with the desires address.

PCB Design

At the moment there isn't a released PCB design. The design consists of a controller board (with a PIC16F1826 and a ST485 RS485 receiver, a jumper for enabling the DMX Address Program Mode, eight resistors and 8 2N3906 transistors, and some connectors.

Here is a proposed sample PCB design:

[1]

LED Connections

The LEDs can either be hand-wired on some sort of substrate (perhaps some plexiglass or linoleum), or a PCB can be designed to hold the LEDs.

DMX-LED Correspondence

Schematic

[2]

Wirelist

Output1,LED1-C,LED2-C,LED3-C LED4-C,LED5-C,LED6-C,LED7-C,LED14-A,LED20-A,LED26-A,LED32-A,LED38-A,LED44-A,LED50-A

Output2,LED1-A,LED8-C,LED9-C,LED10-C,LED11-C,LED12-C,LED13-C,LED14-C,LED21-A,LED27-A,LED33-A,LED39-A,LED45-A,LED51-A

Output3,LED2-A,LED8-A,LED15-C,LED16-C,LED17-C,LED18-C,LED19-C,LED20-C,LED28-C,LED8-A,LED34-A,LED40-A,LED46-A,LED52-A

Output4,LED3-A,LED9-A,LED15-A,LED22-C,LED23-C,LED24-C,LED25-C,LED26-C,LED27-C,LED28-C,LED35-A,LED41-A,LED47-A,LED53-A

Output5,LED4-A,LED10-A,LED16-A,LED22-A,LED29-C,LED30-C,LED31-C,LED32-C,LED33-C,LED34-C,LED35-C,LED42-A,LED48-A,LED54-A

Output6,LED5-A,LED11-A,LED17-A,LED23-A,LED29-A,LED36-C,LED37-C,LED38-C,LED39-C,LED40-C,LED41-C,LED42-C,LED49-A,LED55-A

Output7,LED6-A,LED12-A,LED18-A,LED24-A,LED30-A,LED36-A,LED43-C,LED44-C,LED45-C,LED46-C,LED47-C,LED48-C,LED49-C,LED56-A

Output8,LED7-A,LED13-A,LED19-A,LED25-A,LED31-A,LED37-A,LED43-A,LED50-C,LED51-C,LED52-C,LED53-C,LED54-C,LED55-C,LED56-C

PIC Program

TBA