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NEW PRODUCTS – Miniature 8×8 Blue LED Matrix [BL-M07C881B-21]. You will squeak with delight when you hold this adorable miniature LED matrix. 0.8″ square, its got everything a big LED matrix has, but bite sized! 64 blue 250mcd LEDs are contained inside the plastic body, in an 8×8 matrix. There are 16 pins on the side, 8 on each, with 0.1″ spacing so you can easily plug it into a breadboard with plenty of space to wire it up
Since the display is in a grid, you’ll need to 1:8 multiplex control it. We suggest either using a 74HC595 and TPIC6B595 (using the 74HC’ to control the 8 anodes at once and then using the TPIC’ to drive one cathode at a time) or just using a single MAX7219 which will do the multiplexing work for you.
The Arduino playground has a nice set of tutorials introducing the MAX7219 and 8×8 LED matrices
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These are neat matrices. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear you can tile them properly. According to the datasheet, the dot spacing is 2.5 mm, however, the overall package size is 20.20 mm. This greater than (8 dots * 2.5 mm) = 20 mm. Has anyone tried tiling these?
Comment by Adam Renie — August 11, 2012 @ 11:15 am