RGB LED driver provides full diagnostics on LEDs

The Texas Instruments TLC6C5716-Q1 device is an automotive 16-channel constant-current RGB LED driver that can do tests on the LEDs. The device provides a maximum of 50mA output current set by an external resistor. The device has a 7-bit dot correction with two ranges for each output. The device also has an 8-bit intensity control for the outputs of each colour group. A 12, 10 or 8-bit grayscale control modifies the intensity of each output. The device has circuits that sense faults in the system, including LED faults, reference-resistor faults, adjacent-pin short faults, and more. A slew rate control has two positions for adjustment to get the largest decrease in system noise. There is an interval between the changes of output level from one LED group to a different one. This interval serves to decrease the starting electrical current. The SDI and SDO pins let more than one device be connected in series for control through one serial interface.