Hardware design for wireless LED-based display

LED displays are specifically designed for either inside or outside use. Two main factors determine whether a display can be used inside or outside. The first factor is weather durability. Outside displays are designed to operate in extreme weather conditions while inside displays are not built to operate to the same environmental factors. Secondly, outside displays use different LEDs than inside displays. The LEDs used for outside displays are brighter to account for the varying lighting conditions. Inside displays do not have the same concerns and therefore are not as bright. A scoreboard that is used as an inside display for inside sporting events is selected for this application.

We need to evaluate how to use the sign by checking if we need only numeric or alpha numeric content to be displayed. Colour display in the messages is required or monochrome is sufficient. Number of lines of messages, video messages, etc can also be looked into. These decisions also can increase or decrease the cost of the LED display. For example, a full colour display is more expensive than a monochrome display. We've decided on monochrome, single line display of 7 x 24 LED matrix.

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Originally published by Texas Instruments Inc. at www.ti.com as "Hardware Design Considerations for a Wireless LEDBased Display Design".