Hello to make a long winded story a bit shorter I am working on an art project were I’m going to have cubes of light that react to a person and your kit “Octolively Kit” is what I had in mind for my project except for a few changes to suit the project. Each cube will have a LED and one each of the Near-infrared proximity detector (active/passive). I only need to program them for the slow fade the connections to the sensors and LEDs will be with wire because the cubes are 25” apart and there will be 27 of them. Now I have been racking my brain on how to figure this out but I am a beginner and not having much luck.
For starters will I require 4 ATmega164s for the 27 LEDs or can one Microcontroller control more than 8 LEDs independently if I do not requires the different options? I just need to program for slow fade.

So far I will require,

27 - LED Ultra bright 10 mm Warm white
4 - ATmega164, unprogramed.
27 - Infrared Phototransistor
27 - Infrared 5 mm LED
1 - 2.1 mm Barrel Jack
1 - 5 V Power Supply
8 - 0.1 μF ceramic capacitors
27 - 100 Ohm resisters.
4 - 100 μF electrolytic capacitors

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks.
Matt.

Hi Matt,
Yes, one ATmega164 microcontroller can control more than 8 LEDs, and the one on the Octolively is already doing much more than just that. Among other things, it is controlling the eight IR LEDs and the eight phototransistors. The limitation set on the microcontroller is not necessarily in the program size, but in this case one limitation is in the number of inputs and outputs.

If you want to base your project on the Octolively, one way to approach it would be to get four Octolively kits, and wire up the sensor pairs and LEDs from the PCB locations. You can then select the slow fade program from the boards.

Thank you for the input! another question if I go for 4 Octolively boards can I keep it on the slow fade, if it is set for slow fade? By unplugging or turning off or on will it always return to slow fade or will i need to select slow fade again after turning back on?

The settings are saved in the EEPROM (non-volatile memory), so each board will remember its configuration until you change it again.

Perfect! thank you so much.