This board came about for two reasons. I wanted to learn about the MIC58x1 shift registers on the electronics side and I liked the challenge of programming a scrolling display with limited resources.  In the end I managed to program a number of effects (fade-in, fade-out, scrolling, reveals etc.) and scroll text, using code which will easily map to a display of any size.

Unfortunately the cheap Chinese 8×8 LED matrix that I bought has a ridiculous pinout, hence the spaghetti routing. If I was going to design a larger matrix (or one with multiplecolours) I would definitely pay the extra to get a decent module.

Video

I initally made the circuit on a breadboard, to test a few alternative methods of wiring it up.  Some basic code was needed to make it run, cue a cute little Pacman style ghost.

Pictures

Images of the silkscreen and routing are below, along with the finished board.

Thanks

A number of people helped through the process of designing the board and code.  In particular, a thread on ETO discussing the options for driving 64 LEDs with less pins was very useful.

Download

Download schematic (PDF) – the original design
Download board (ZIP) – Eagle files