For example, if you have LEDs with a 20 mA forward current – the resistor calculation would be: Where R (in Ohms) is the resistor value and Imax (in Amps) is the maximum amount of current you want to flow through the LEDs. The required resistor value is calculated with the following formula: The purpose of the resistor is to control the amount of current that can flow through the LEDs. Take note of the LED orientation – and remember the TLC5940 is a common-anode LED driver – so all the LED anodes are connected together and then to 5V:įor this particular circuit, you won’t need an external 5V power supply – however you may need one in the future. a 0.1uF ceramic and a 4.7uF electrolytic capacitor.16 normal, everyday LEDs that can have a forward current of up to 20 mA.You can use it to experiment with various functions and get an idea of what is possible. The following circuit is the minimum required to control sixteen LEDs from your Arduino or compatible. If you’re not sure how to install a library, click here. Furthermore, please download and install the TLC5940 Arduino library by Alex Leone which can be found here. At this point, please download a copy of the TLC5940_data_sheet (.pdf) as you will refer to it through this process. It really is a convenient part, allowing you to adjust the brightness of sixteen individual LEDs via PWM (pulse-width modulation) – and you can also daisy-chain more than one TLC5940 to control even more.ĭuring this tutorial we’ll explain how to control one or more TLC5940 ICs with LEDs and also look at controlling servos. The TLC5940 is available in the DIP version above, and also surface-mount. First up, here is a few examples of the TLC5940:

Our reason for doing this is to demonstrate another, easier way of driving many LEDs – and also servos.

In this article we are going to examine the Texas Instruments TLC5940 16-channel LED driver IC.

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