Drivers for a 7 segment display.

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Drivers for a 7 segment display.

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Started 3 years ago by
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Anonymous
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I am new to the Maple platform. I have some experience with Visual Basic but I have very limited experience with the C language.

I have a project which I need to use a Seven segment LED display. I have recently found a suitable display at a reasonable price, it is based on the " Tm1638 " chip. It is a serial display that can be daisychained. It has a 8 digit, "7 segment" display, with 8 bicolor LEDs, and an 8 button keyboard that can detect multiple button combination. The current price is about 8$ US.
The chip by itself is running $1.50 on eBay. Each chip can control a 3 x 8 keyboard matrix, And can be used to drive a 8 x 8 or an 8 x 10 LED matrix.

A driver has been created for the Arduino, but will not Compile for the Maple platform. Has anyone Ported this driver to the Maple board.

There is a ton of information for the Arduino, including videos. Too much to list here so you'll have to Google it, if you want to know more.

I appreciate any help you can give me.

Thank you.

Posted 3 years ago #
crenn
Moderator

Look up the 4511 7 segment LED driver, it's a nice easy to use driver however you'd need to design a circuit to use them and also would use more pins that the TM1638 solution.

I look at look at this driver: http://code.google.com/p/tm1638-library/ and can't see any reason why it wouldn't work, however I'd need to look into more detail. Is this the driver you meant?

Posted 3 years ago #
Anonymous
Unregistered

Yes, that is the driver code that I am Referring to. I was wondering if anyone has ported it to the Maple platform. it will control this board "http://www.dealextreme.com/p/8x-digital-tube-8x-key-8x-double-color-led-module-81873"

The TM1638 Chip will control up to 10, 7 segment LED As well as a 3 x 8 matrix keyboard. and uses a serial Interface.
there is also a version of this chip that will control up to 16, 7 segment LED's.

The 4511 chip has been around for many years and I have used it in several projects in the past, but it will only control 1, 7 segment LED, Per chip,And uses a four bit parallel Input, And will not support a keyboard.
I would need 8, chips to control 8, seven segment LEDs. + an additional 11 I/O pins for the keyboard. That would be at least 18 I/O pins. plus I would have to design and build my own circuit board, an additional cost.

this Chip uses 2 I/O ports for interface + 1 I/O port "for Chip select" per Chip/circuit board to control everything.

There is no comparison between the implementation of the two chips And I do not want to use 40-year-old technology in my project.

whereas it might be easier to write the software for that Chip, the hardware requirements and cost, make it impractical.

thank you anyway, I appreciate the try.

Posted 3 years ago #

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