Troubling discovery...

Now having made my first purchases, I took the time to examine what I had purchased. In buying the LED panel, I reasoned, that it would be necessary to start with the basics. We would need to learn how the board worked and how to start making our circuits. I thought what would be easier than turning on a light. I went back to the ebay listing for my purchase. It had included technical specifications and a schematic.

The first thing that I noticed was that it showed 8 rows with pin numbers 17, 18, 19, 20, 29, 30, 31, and 32. While odd that the pin numbers were grouped in 2 sets of 4, this didn't bother me as much as the fact that each column had 3 pin numbers. Pins 1-8 look to be connected to blue, pins 9-16 are connected to red, and pins 21-28 are connected to green. How could it be that each column had 3 pins? The diagrams didn't really show the pins, but there was a photo that showed the bottom of the panel. I carefully counted the pins, using my mouse to keep track, and found that there were 32 pins. 64 LEDs, but only 32 pins. Even more concerning, since each color of each led was treated as it it were a separate led, there is really 192 bulbs. I knew enough about electronics to know that each would require a positive and a negative so that brings us to a whopping 

384 connections with only 32 pins!

Now, I'm not a complete stranger to electronics and schematics. Most of my education came from Radio Shack and the electronic project kits that I loved so much as a child, too many years ago. I remembered, for example, that an led, which is a type of diode, will only let power pass in one direction which flows in the direction that the arrow. 

Looking at the schematic for the LED panel, I can see that each of the rows are tied together to the positive side of the diodes, and then there are 24 columns tied to each of the negative connections. Apparently, I have to be able to switch both positive and negative on and off to light these LEDs.

So much for starting out with the basics. This would require a lot more research. Still, I don't regret my Arduino purchase and can't wait for it to get here.