The adapter board can accomodate from 1-3 LEDs per channel and the adapter boards may be daisy chained to get lots of LEDs.  Fully populated, the LEDs alone will likely cost over $100 USD. 

For control the driver can run stand alone with its on-board controller or it can speak USB, RS232 (Serial port), RS485 (DMX), IR base band and/or modulated, and can power and sense from an external or internal IR receiver.  I've built some hardware in so that the controllers RS485 In/Out may be chained.  In this case, the controller is capable of learning its location on the bus.  It is not true DMX electrically since it does not on its own provide the optical isolation, but it is not hard to add and for the purposes of HTs, it is not really needed. 

Connections to the unit are through standard connectors like the 3.5mm stereo connectors used on most IR distribution systems.  In addition, the entire connector array can be replaced with screw terminals so that it is easy to wire and chain units together.

To aid in development and debug, the driver contains LEDs on board so that you don't need to use the adapter board.

The PWM, current monitoring, and other functions are implemented in software.  There is also a spot for an extra EEPROM if required.  The board is designed to take raw power to the switch mode converters while using a choice of regulators to power the control electronics.  For high power systems, it can take a large thermally enhanced linear.  For small systems it can take a lowly SOT-23 package.

Adapter board

The adapter board is designed to work in a couple of different modes:

• Up to 9 Low power LEDs to 10mm in size, through hole
• Up to 9 High power LEDs up to 1W each, both through hole and thermally enhanced SMT
• 3 Low Power RGB SMTs for board debug
• Up to 6 LED "Sticks" like the Cyrons

In addition, the boards can be terminated on board, off board, or chained together to generate up to 30W with the aforementioned controller.  The board is thermally protected by a sensor that can communicate back to the controller.  The boards are designed to either stack together (without any wires).  Or they may be wired together for remoting via the screw terminals.  The connectors for the Cyron and other sticks may go on the front or the back to accomodate the mechanicals of a particular system.

The driver and adapter board are designed to fit into a single small chassis (ala the ps3toothfairy).   It would be straight forward though to mount them to anything custom. 

As with the rest of my designs, this one is RoHS compliant so it does use Pb free plating and is more difficult an assembly than the old Pb standby.

This is a complete respin of the design that I did for my own system.  However, it is fully backwards compatible.  In other words, the board can be mostly no-popped (keeping the BOM cost down) and still operate the Cyron or Ikea sticks.