I want to control a matrix of LEDs for a little light show project. I want to run a grid of 18x18 LEDs and need 36+ IO but can only find that as an SMD package.
I don't know if it's even possible to place SMD components down and hook them up to all my discrete LEDs, so I'm wondering if there is a through hole solution.
And on that note, is there a place to buy these through hole components for a reasonable price? The distributors I've looked at all seem to be for high-power applications--where did my school get the cheap through hole FETS and OPAMPS that they supply us with?
To be honest I don't understand either of those. The first seems taking parallel IOs, turning them into a few serial streams, and then back to parallel? I'm pretty new to this, could you please explain it in simpler terms?
So this way I could multiply my number of outputs by 8 (for each shift register i use?) I send, eg, 10101010, and it will become 8 separate outputs. Then my PIC would have to be 8 times faster than I had planned, right?