ISSN (Online) 2395-2717

International Journal of Engineering Research in Electrical and Electronic

Engineering (IJEREEE)
Vol 4, Issue 2, February 2018

Electronic Scrolling Display Using Arduino Board

[1]
R.Ranadheer Reddy, [2] N Prashanth, [3] G. Indira, [4] M Sharada
[1]
Asst. Professor,
Balaji Institute of Engineering & science, Warangal, Telangana.

Abstract: -- The led Display System is aimed at the colleges and universities for displaying day-to-day information continuously or at
regular intervals during the working hours. Being GSM-based system, it offers flexibility to display flash news or announcements
faster than the programmable system. Keyboard-based display system can also be used at other public places like schools, hospitals,
railway stations, gardens etc. without affecting the surrounding environment. The led display system mainly consists of a receiver and
a display toolkit which can be programmed from an Arduino IDE platform. It receives the message, through serial port and displays
the desired information after necessary code conversion. It can serve as an electronic notice board and display the important notices
instantaneously thus avoiding the latency. Being modular design, the led display is easy to expand and allows the user to add more
display units at any time and at any location in the campus depending on the requirement of the institute.

seven segment display is a form of electronic display device

I. INTRODUCTION for displaying decimal numerals that is an alternative to the
Now-a-days LED Message Scrolling Displays are becoming complex dot matrix displays.
very popular .These displays are used in shopping malls, The roll of a dice has decided the fate of kingdoms. The dice
theatres , public transportation, traffic signs, highways signs, is the oldest device known to human beings for generating
etc., The big problem with these displays is to carry a random numbers from 1 to 6.In this paper, we present an
computer or special keyboard for generating and sending electronic device using an 8x8 dot-matrix LED display to
messages to LED moving display boards dynamically. simulate the faces of a real dice. Pressing a switch generates a
Carrying a host computer or special keyboard every time to random number on the display. A microcontroller is used to
generate message for LED display boards is big headache and check the status of the switch and generate a random number.
also increase cost if it go for wireless based message sending. The dice number is displayed on the dot-matrix LED display
To make the LED scrolling display more portable, a GSM with the help of an LED display driver.
mobile phone is used instead of carrying keyboard or a host
computer for generating or sending messages to LED display Dot Matrix Display:
board. A text message is typed in the GSM mobile phone and The dot matrix LED displays can be made with individual
sent it by using SMS service of the mobile phone to LED LEDs, or a pluggable unit can be bought. By making use of
moving display boards. A Arduino board is connected to the the premade pluggable unit, production costs can be lowered.
LED display hardware is used to receive the message and send Further, this type of display can show graphics and normal
it to the controller circuit of the LED display. Then the text. This enables the display to be used for more than just
controller circuit of the LED display filters the message sporting events. It can be used as a billboard and information
content in message and changes the display text in LED board in shopping malls. These units can be stacked or
display dynamically. By using this arduino sketch it is cascaded in such a manner that a larger display can be
possible to change the text in the LED display board from constructed. This is usually done in multiples of eight, making
anywhere in the country. The idea implemented in this project use of an eight bit microcontroller, as this enables easier
reduces the total cost that is required in the traditional LED driving. A 40-pixel by 56-pixel size is thus the smallest size of
display boards not only it makes easier to send message to the a LED panel that can be constructed when making use of a 5-
LED display boards. The project uses a Arduino UNO board pixel by 7-pixel LED dot matrix unit as shown in figure. 1.
at the display side with atmel 328p micro controller to send Each of these LED dot matrix display units can display a
text to drive the LED display board. Along with these a power character or symbol, hence a total of 40 characters could be
supply unit and supporting hardware for microcontroller is displayed at any given time. These characters will, however,
used. be too small to be seen at long distances away from a LED dot
matrix billboard. Hence pixel binning will have to be used.
A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned array, used to This is the process in which adjacent LEDs are grouped
represent characters, symbols and image. Every type of together to make larger pixels. By doing this the resolution of
modern technology uses dot matrices for display of the LED dot matrix billboard will be lowered, but the size of
information, including cell phones, televisions, and printers. each character will be larger and appear brighter.
They are used in textiles with sewing, knitting and weaving. A • be visible in bad weather conditions

All Rights Reserved © 2018 IJEREEE 49

 ISSN (Online) 2395-2717

International Journal of Engineering Research in Electrical and Electronic

Engineering (IJEREEE)
Vol 4, Issue 2, February 2018

• have the highest possible refresh rate without compromising • be able to do pixel binning for lower resolution
brightness applications

Brightness: Voltage Regulator:

With all LEDs glowing, the brightness of the transmitter is The function of the voltage regulator is to control the voltage
dramatically enhanced. This makes the audio transmission given to the Arduino board and stabilize the DC voltages used
more effective and immune to noise as the attenuation in the by the processor and other elements.
medium becomes negligibly small for line-of-sight (LOS) Crystal Oscillator:
reception. In addition, the receiver’s distance from the The crystal oscillator helps Arduino in dealing with time
transmitter can be increased. issues. How does Arduino calculate time? The answer is, by
using the crystal oscillator. The number printed on top of the
Arduino crystal is 16.000H9H. It tells us that the frequency is
16,000,000 Hertz or 16 MHz.

Arduino Reset:
You can reset your Arduino board, i.e., start your program
from the beginning. You can reset the UNO board in two
ways. First, by using the reset button (17) on the board.
Second, you can connect an external reset button to the
Arduino pin labelled RESET (5).

Pins (3.3, 5, GND, Vin):

3.3V (6) − Supply 3.3 output volt
Figure 1 5V (7) − Supply 5 output volt
Most of the components used with Arduino board works fine
Power USB: with 3.3 volt and 5 volt.
Arduino board can be powered by using the USB cable from GND (Ground) − There are several GND pins on the Arduino,
your computer. All you need to do is connect the USB cable to any of which can be used to ground your circuit.
the USB connection Vin (9) − This pin also can be used to power the Arduino
Power (Barrel Jack): board from an external power source, like AC mains power
Arduino boards can be powered directly from the AC mains supply
power supply by connecting it to the Barrel Jack Analog pins:
The Arduino UNO board has five analog input pins A0
through A5. These pins can read the signal from an analog
sensor like the humidity sensor or temperature sensor and
convert it into a digital value that can be read by the
microprocessor.
Main microcontroller:
Each Arduino board has its own microcontroller (11). You can
assume it as the brain of your board. The main IC (integrated
circuit) on the Arduino is slightly different from board to
board. The microcontrollers are usually of the ATMEL
Company. You must know what IC your board has before
loading up a new program from the Arduino IDE. This
The LED dot matrix display should :- information is available on the top of the IC. For more details
• be reconfigurable for indoor and outdoor applications about the IC construction and functions, you can refer to the
• be expandable by making use of extra LED dot data sheet.
matrix display panels ICSP pin
• be able to alter brightness automatically Mostly, ICSP (12) is an AVR, a tiny programming header for
• use modular design and the Arduino consisting of MOSI, MISO, SCK, RESET, VCC,
and GND. It is often referred to as an SPI (Serial Peripheral

All Rights Reserved © 2018 IJEREEE 50

 ISSN (Online) 2395-2717

International Journal of Engineering Research in Electrical and Electronic

Engineering (IJEREEE)
Vol 4, Issue 2, February 2018

Interface), which could be considered as an "expansion" of the Reading serial data

output. Actually, you are slaving the output device to the
master of the SPI bus. void readSerial(void)
Power LED indicator {
This LED should light up when you plug your Arduino into a static uint8_t putIndex = 0;
power source to indicate that your board is powered up
correctly. If this light does not turn on, then there is something while (Serial.available())
wrong with the connection. {
TX and RX LEDs message[putIndex] = (char)Serial.read();
On your board, you will find two labels: TX (transmit) and if ((message[putIndex] == '\n') || (putIndex >= BUF_SIZE-
RX (receive). They appear in two places on the Arduino UNO 3)) // end of message character or full buffer
board. First, at the digital pins 0 and 1, to indicate the pins {
responsible for serial communication. Second, the TX and RX // put in a message separator and end the string
led (13). The TX led flashes with different speed while message[putIndex] = '\0';
sending the serial data. The speed of flashing depends on the // restart the index for next filling spree and flag we have a
baud rate used by the board. RX flashes during the receiving message waiting
process. putIndex = 0;
Digital I/O newMessageAvailable = true;
The Arduino UNO board has 14 digital I/O pins (15) (of }
which 6 provide PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) output. else
These pins can be configured to work as input digital pins to // Just save the next char in next location
read logic values (0 or 1) or as digital output pins to drive message[putIndex++];
different modules like LEDs, relays, etc. The pins labeled ―~‖ }
can be used to generate PWM. }
AREF:
AREF stands for Analog Reference. It is sometimes, used to Uploading Code through Arduino IDE environment
set an external reference voltage (between 0 and 5 Volts) as
the upper limit for the analog input pins.
Circuit Block Diagram:

II. RESULT

Figure 4

Program
Defining the pins

#define MAX_DEVICES 8
#define CLK_PIN 13 // or SCK
#define DATA_PIN 11 // or MOSI
#define CS_PIN 10 // or SS Single module display

All Rights Reserved © 2018 IJEREEE 51

 ISSN (Online) 2395-2717

International Journal of Engineering Research in Electrical and Electronic

Engineering (IJEREEE)
Vol 4, Issue 2, February 2018

same principle can be applied to control electrical appliances

at a distant location.
c. This technology could be further modified and more
upgraded as per individual need and interest.
We have discussed some basic ideas of this technology. And
depending on innovative applications user can upgrade as per
requirement.

V. CONCLUSION

This model can be used very efficiently in establishments like

Figure 5 array of modules displays connected in series chain restaurants wherein the order and special discounts can
be displayed at all branches simultaneously, in colleges
III. APPLICATION wherein students and staffs can be informed simultaneously in
no time. It can be set up at public transport places like
A. Educational Institution and Organization: Currently we rely railways, bus station, and airport and also at roadside for
on putting up papers on notice boards to inform people of traffic control and in emergency situations, it is cost efficient
events. This method can be discarded by using GSM based system and very easy to handle. Latency involved in using of
LED display to display information in real time. E.g. papers in displaying of notices is avoided and the information
Placement news, cultural activities news, etc. can be updated by the authorized persons.
B. Advertisement: In shopping malls we get to hear the offers REFERENCES
on various products from time to time. Instead we
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no of in patients etc.
[3] Pang, GKH; Chan, CH; Kwan, TTO, ―Tricolor light-
IV. MERITS emitting diode dot matrix display system with audio output‖,
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C. Faster means of transferring information: There is no delay
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