Electronic – Sourcing current with sink LED driver

constant-currentcurrent-sourcedriverled

I'm using an existing keypad with 8 LEDs that source power. I was hoping to use and LED driver of sorts, but all of the ones I find only refer to sinking power. Is it possible to use these drivers to source current, and if so is there a way of understanding how to convert the sinking specifications to sourcing? The Vcc for my system is 3.3V and LEDs are 3.4V and 20mA

Was looking at this TI TLC5917 driver.

The LEDs on keypad are Lite-On LTST-C150TBKT.

The circuit is setup like

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

Best Answer

Firstly, these drivers do not sink or source power. The stuff they source or sink is current. Power is the rate of energy use or conversion. Current is the flow of electric charge. Very different things.

The arrangement of LEDs you have is called common cathode, because the cathodes of all the LEDs are connected to the same thing.

A driver designed to sink current can not be made to source current. It's certainly possible to design a driver to source current, but this would be a different component. I took a quick look on TI's web site and didn't find anything equivalent to the driver you were considering, but which sourced current. I'm sure someone makes one, but it's somewhat less common.

I'm guessing this is a hobby project, so you aren't going to incur any unacceptable cost by using a few more components. So, you might consider skipping the driver IC. Here's one way you might do it:

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

The transistor bases can run directly to a microcontroller, or an ordinary shift register.