Infinitely expandable display apparatus and driving method thereof

A driving method of an expandable display apparatus including a plurality of display circuits arranged in a plurality of rows and a plurality of columns and the plurality of display circuits connected to one another through an interface circuit based on a cascading scheme, and each of the plurality of display circuits includes an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) embedded therein, the driving method comprising:

• outputting image data having a first resolution to the plurality of display circuits using a set board;
• determining, by each of a plurality of slave display circuits from the plurality of display circuits, a relative location of the slave display circuit with respect to a previous display circuit from the plurality of display circuits that is connected to the slave display circuit, the relative location determined based a combination of logical information represented by a plurality of connection check pins that are included in the slave display circuit, each connection check pin representing logical combination information for the connection check pin that is either a first logic value or a second logic value based on the connection check pin's connection to the previous display circuit;
• generating, by each of the plurality of slave display circuits from the plurality of display circuits, unit arrangement coordinate information indicative of a location of the slave display circuit in a particular row from the plurality of rows and a location of the slave display circuit in a particular column from the plurality of columns based on the determined relative location of the slave display circuit;
• transmitting, by at least one slave display circuit of the plurality of slave display circuits, the unit arrangement coordinate information indicative of the location of the at least one slave circuit to an adjacent slave display circuit from the plurality of slave display circuits that is located in a same row as the at least one slave circuit;
• and
• scaling, by a master display circuit from the plurality of display circuits, the image data having the first resolution based on the unit arrangement coordinate information, and transferring, by the master display circuit, the scaled image data to the plurality of slave display circuits,
• wherein the master display circuit that scaled the image data and the plurality of slave display circuits display the scaled image data.

An expandable display apparatus comprising:

• a circuit configured to output image data having a first resolution;
• and
• a plurality of display circuits arranged in a plurality of rows and a plurality of columns and the plurality of display circuits connected to each other in a cascaded arrangement via an interface circuit, the plurality of display circuits having a second resolution that is different from the first resolution,
• wherein a first display circuit from the plurality of display circuits is configured to determine a mismatch between the first resolution of the image data and the second resolution of the plurality of display circuits, and scale the image data to have the second resolution rather than the first resolution responsive to the mismatch,
• wherein each of a plurality of second display circuits from the plurality of display circuits generates unit arrangement coordinate information indicative of a location of the second display circuit in a particular row from the plurality of rows and a location of the second display circuit in a particular column from the plurality of columns based on a connection of the interface circuit and at least one second display circuit of the plurality of second display circuits transmits the unit arrangement coordinate information indicative of the location of the at least one second display circuit to an adjacent second display circuit from the plurality of second display circuits that is located in a same row as the at least one second display circuit, and
• wherein the first display circuit that scaled the image data and the plurality of second display circuits from the plurality of display circuits are configured to display the scaled image data having the second resolution,
• wherein each of the plurality of second display circuits comprises:
• an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC);
• an interface connection terminal to connect the second display circuit to the interface circuit;
• and
• a plurality of connection check pins connected between the interface connection terminal and the ASIC,
• wherein each of the plurality of connection check pins of the second display circuit represents logical combination information for the connection check pin that is either a first logic value or a second logic value based on the connection check pin's connection to a previous display circuit from the plurality of display circuits that is connected to the second display circuit, and a combination of the logical combination information represented by the plurality of connection check pins is indicative of a relative location of the second display circuit with respect to the previous display circuit and is used by the second display circuit to generate the unit arrangement coordinate information for the second display circuit.