Hi folks. I've been thinking about an arduino lighting project and stumbled on Moteino today, which seems like a far better choice for wireless than the xbee option I was considering before (and my head is spinning with all the possibilities for home automation and monitoring, great work Felix!). This lighting project has six lights that I think I'd like to be able to control independently. Each has an enable line and a PWM brightness control. This is all within one fixture, so using multiple arduinos seems really impractical. Moteino uses 2 of the 6 PWMs for the transceiver and MoteinoMega uses 3 of the 8 PWMs for the transceiver, so in either case I come up short. Comparing the two boards, MOSI clearly doesn't need to be a PWM, it is on Moteino, not on Mega. Likewise on Mega, MISO and SCK don't need to be PWM, because they're not on Moteino. Could I move these to other digital pins and still retain any compatibility with the libraries? Unless I can also move D10 on Moteino, I'd still only have 5 PWMs available there, but Mega could get up to 7. Can D10 on Moteino or D4 on Mega? Any suggestions? Thanks!
EDIT: Looks like that last PWM usage, D10/D4, is the NSS/SEL pin based on some RFM12 wiring diagrams, so maybe that doesn't need a PWM either. Maybe D10-D13 on Moteino could be relocated to D14-D17? I'm assuming I don't care about the flash usage if I don't extend the flash, is that valid?
Hi! Welcome to the Forum.
How about something like this?
http://playground.arduino.cc/Learning/TLC5940 (http://playground.arduino.cc/Learning/TLC5940)
It expands the number of PWM outputs to 16. And you can cascade them.
And here are some notes:
http://effluviaofascatteredmind.blogspot.pt/2012/05/tlc5940-tlc5941-and-arduino.html (http://effluviaofascatteredmind.blogspot.pt/2012/05/tlc5940-tlc5941-and-arduino.html)
And here:
http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php/topic,37963.0.html (http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php/topic,37963.0.html)
(http://tlc5940arduino.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/images/breadboard-arduino-tlc5940.png)
Quote from: luisr320 on January 10, 2016, 09:11:57 PM
Hi! Welcome to the Forum.
How about something like this?
http://playground.arduino.cc/Learning/TLC5940 (http://playground.arduino.cc/Learning/TLC5940)
It expands the number of PWM outputs to 16. And you can cascade them.
Hi luisr320. Thanks for the pointer, that's an interesting option. From a parts count, expense, and complexity perspective, freeing up some PWMs sure looks more attractive, but if that's not possible or is going to cause me grief with rolling my own library, this may indeed be the way to go. Thanks!
Hmm, more research seems to be pointing to the selected pins being purposefully chosen for hardware SPI support, so I think moving them would imply software driven SPI programming. Confirm/deny? Looks like I'll be needing that TLC5940...