Summary of Arduino and 7 Segment Display – Interfacing Tutorial
This article provides a tutorial on interfacing a seven segment LED display with an Arduino. It explains that seven segment displays are cost-effective devices used to display digits and some characters, typically in embedded and industrial applications. The tutorial starts with interfacing a single digit common anode seven segment display to an Arduino and then advances to controlling a 4-digit display using a shift register. It covers the limitations and advantages of seven segment displays compared to more advanced options like LCDs.
Parts used in the Arduino and 7 Segment Display Interfacing Tutorial:
- Arduino board
- Single digit 7 segment LED display (Common Anode)
- 4 digit 7 segment LED display
- Shift register
- Connecting wires
- Resistors (for current limiting)
In this article, we are publishing a tutorial on how to interface seven segment LED display to Arduino. Seven segment displays are used in many embedded system and industrial applications where the range of outputs to be shown is known beforehand. Basic 1 digit seven segment display can show numbers from 0-9 and a few characters. 7 segment displays are of different types; especially they differ in the number of digits/character it can display. Basically a 7 segment display is a single unit, which can display only 1 digit or 1 character. More digits are displayed by multiplexing single unit 7 segment displays together to form 2 digit display, 3 digit display or 4 digit 7 segment display. Its quiet easy to interface Arduino and 7 Segment display together! Lets begin the tutorial.
A 7 segment display has many limitations, especially in the range of characters it can display.There are displays in market which are much more advanced than seven segment displays and can display almost every character in the alphabet. For example:- a 16×2 LCD – which can display almost all ASCII characters. You might think why 7 segment display still exist in market. Well, 7 segment displays are the cheapest option when it comes to display devices available in market. A single digit/character 7 segment display unit is available at 1/10th of the cost of a 16×2 LCD module.
We begin this tutorial by interfacing a single digit (1 digit/character) 7 segment LED display to Arduino.Once we learn the single digit 7 segment display interfacing to arduino and its code/program, we move on to interface 4 digit seven segment display with arduino using shift register.
As you can see there are 10 pins in total. You may notice two pins named com, as shown in the circuit diagram all the anodes (+ pins) of the LEDs are connected to these two pins. We call these 2 pins as common anodes and such displays are called Common Anode 7 segment displays.
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