Seven Segment Display Interfacing
Seven Segment Display Interfacing
Seven Segment Display Interfacing
The 7 segment display is found in many displays such as microwaves or fancy toaster ovens and
occasionally in non cooking devices. It is just 7 LEDs that have been combined into one case to
make a convenient device for displaying numbers and some letters. The display is shown on the
left. The pin out of the display is on the right.
This version is a common anode version. That means that the positive leg of each LED is
connected to a common point which is pin 3 in this case. Each LED has a negative leg that is
connected to one of the pins of the device. To make it work you need to connect pin 3 to 5
volts. Then to make each segment light up, connect the ground pin for that led to ground. A
resistor is required to limit the current. Rather than using a resistor from each LED to ground,
you can just use one resistor from Vcc to pin 3 to limit the current.
The following table shows how to form the numbers 0 to 9 and the letters A, b, C, d, E, and F. '0'
means that pin is connected to ground. '1' means that pin is connected to Vcc.
To Display a (Pin 1) b (Pin 10) c (Pin 8) d (Pin 6) e (Pin 5) f (Pin 2) g (Pin 9)
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1
2 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
3 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
4 1 0 0 1 1 0 0
5 0 1 0 0 1 0 0
6 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
7 0 0 0 1 1 1 1
8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
9 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
A 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
b 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
C 0 1 1 0 0 0 1
d 1 0 0 0 0 1 0
E 0 1 1 0 0 0 0
F 0 1 1 1 0 0 0
Now, we want to run the display with the AT89C51 microcontroller. We will use Port 0 to run
the display. Connect the AT89C51 to the 7 segment display as follows.