PREMA Releases New 10-Channel Constant Current LED Driver

PREMA Semiconductor GmbH announced that it has designed a new 10-channel LED driver. The PR4010 drives up to 10 LEDs of any color individually. For more LEDs several PR4010 can be cascaded and programmed via one serial interface. In this way it is possible to drive (for example) 75 LEDs of a mulitplexed 15 x 5 dot matrix display with only two PR4010 and five additional transistors.

Each of the 10 LED driver outputs is a current sink for up to 10mA. The serial interface with latched input allows individual programming of each LED channel by an external microcontroller. The current variation between the LED channels does not exceed ±5% and thus the company claims that a very uniform control of the LEDs is guaranteed. The LED current resp. the brightness for all LEDs is set by an external resistor. Additionally it can be varied through a PWM signal at the "blank" input, which allows ON/OFF control for all channels independent of the serial interface. The PR4010 has been designed for supply voltages from 3 up to 5.5V.

Typical applications are driving dot matrix or LED segment displays. So may, for example, two PR4010 drive a 15 x 5 dot matrix display. 15 outputs of both PR4010 are used here as column drivers, the remaining five outputs work as row drivers together with five external PNP transistors in multiplexed operation. Further applications are LED displays like bargraphs or status displays. The PR4010 is designed in a SSOP20 package.