Pulsing current through a LED
Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2010 1:59 pm
Hi there,
I'm pretty new to electronics and so please forgive me if I'm asking silly questions.
I'm thinking of building an MPU based application that would involve controlling multiple (lots of) LEDs. Basically a matrix display... Due to the limited number of output pins on the MPU I'm going to have to resort to turning individual lines of LEDs on for a short time then turning them off and moving to the next line.
Because I'll be pulsing current through a LED for a tiny fraction of a second my guess is that the LED is going to be pretty dim so...
1 What would be the effect of increasing the current (for a very short period) to a level beyond which the component would usually fail (say 30mA for a LED)?
2 Is the a method (algorithm) to calculate the average of pulsed DC current?
3 Would increasing the current adversely affect component reliability?
Thanks in advance,
Steve.
I'm pretty new to electronics and so please forgive me if I'm asking silly questions.
I'm thinking of building an MPU based application that would involve controlling multiple (lots of) LEDs. Basically a matrix display... Due to the limited number of output pins on the MPU I'm going to have to resort to turning individual lines of LEDs on for a short time then turning them off and moving to the next line.
Because I'll be pulsing current through a LED for a tiny fraction of a second my guess is that the LED is going to be pretty dim so...
1 What would be the effect of increasing the current (for a very short period) to a level beyond which the component would usually fail (say 30mA for a LED)?
2 Is the a method (algorithm) to calculate the average of pulsed DC current?
3 Would increasing the current adversely affect component reliability?
Thanks in advance,
Steve.