Tricolor LED display system with audio output

Abstract

A tricolor LED display system (10) is provided having a plurality of multi-color LEDs (22) that operate as concurrent display and data communication elements. These dual-use tricolor LEDs are coupled to a special-purpose computer system (12) and audio signal transmitter (16) for simultaneously controlling the visible display signal from the LEDs, and for modulating audio information onto the visible light signal emitted by the LEDs. A receiver circuit (24) receives the modulated visible light signal from the LEDs and demodulates the received signal to recover the audio information, which is then presented to a user of the system through an audio interface.