System and method to address and control serially connected LEDs
First Claim
1. A system for controlling a plurality of LEDs, comprising one or more serial data busses to convey binary digital information, comprising:
- a) a Bus Controller, which controls one or more LED Units, which are connected to each other and to the Bus Controller via a serial data bus, and which Bus Controller executes user-defined programs which describe the behavior of the various LED Units in terms of brightness, time, and any other relevant parameters;
b) one or more LED Units, each of which has two data ports;
port A, which faces the Bus Controller on the serial data bus, and port B, which faces away from the Bus Controller on the serial data bus and each of which LED Units performs the functions of;
i) receiving on port A data packets comprised of an address field and a data field;
ii) retransmitting on port B packets which have been received on port A, after modifying the address field by one;
iii) controlling the brightness of the LED Unit'"'"'s associated with one or more LEDs based on the one or more commands encoded in the data field of packets which are received on port A of the LED Unit and which have an address field which is set to a value which is expected by the LED Unit.
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Abstract
This application relates to the systems and methods for networking and control of lighting systems. In particular, this application relates to the addressing and control of light emitting diodes (LEDs) connected serially on a bus within a network of serially bussed LEDs. The approaches described in this application simplify and lower the cost of control by distributing the control functions between a serial bus controller and controllers associated with individual LEDs or LED circuits on the serial bus. Hardware intensive decoding of predefined addresses, or time consuming address processing and determining algorithms, are not employed. Instead, the addressing method disclosed both simplifies the system by reducing hardware requirements and improves the speed of the data packets and reduces packet latency moving down the serial bus.
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Citations
14 Claims
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1. A system for controlling a plurality of LEDs, comprising one or more serial data busses to convey binary digital information, comprising:
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a) a Bus Controller, which controls one or more LED Units, which are connected to each other and to the Bus Controller via a serial data bus, and which Bus Controller executes user-defined programs which describe the behavior of the various LED Units in terms of brightness, time, and any other relevant parameters; b) one or more LED Units, each of which has two data ports;
port A, which faces the Bus Controller on the serial data bus, and port B, which faces away from the Bus Controller on the serial data bus and each of which LED Units performs the functions of;i) receiving on port A data packets comprised of an address field and a data field; ii) retransmitting on port B packets which have been received on port A, after modifying the address field by one; iii) controlling the brightness of the LED Unit'"'"'s associated with one or more LEDs based on the one or more commands encoded in the data field of packets which are received on port A of the LED Unit and which have an address field which is set to a value which is expected by the LED Unit. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. A method of controlling a plurality of LEDs connected with serial data busses which convey binary digital information, comprising:
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a. providing a Bus Controller to control at least one LED Unit connected to the Bus Controller via one of the serial data busses, by executing on the Bus Controller a user-defined program to control the behavior of various LED Units; b. each of the LED Units;
(i) receiving data packets comprised of an address field and a data field;
(ii) retransmitting packets after decrementing the address field by one; and
(iii) controlling the behavior of at least one LED associated with the LED Unit based on at least one commands encoded in the data field of packets which have an address field which is set to a value to which the LED Unit is programmed to respond.
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Specification