Embedded systems for controlling LED matrix displays

LED matrix displays are a common presence in everyday life – they can be found in trains, buses, tramways, office information tables or outdoor media. The structure of the display unit is similar for all these devices, a matrix of light emitting diodes coupled between row and column lines, but there are many options for the display controller that switches these lines. Present paper analyzes different types of embedded systems that can control the LED matrix, based on single board computers, on microcontrollers with different peripheral devices or with programmable logic devices like field programmable gate arrays with implemented soft processor cores. Scalability, easiness of implementation and costs are analyzed for all proposed solutions.