Control 7 segment LED displays with AVR

LED displays are nothing more than sets of Light Emitting Diodes. The difference is that they have different shapes in order to display specific information. So driving LED displays is the same as regular LED’s.

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This is simple connection when there are enough of microcontroller Pins. But if you want to connect more displays you will need more microcontroller pins than it can give you. Then you need to make more advanced circuit with dynamic control.

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The idea of this circuit is very simple. Human eye is inertial and can’t notice fast flicker of images. Thus you need to light only one display at one time, and then switch to another and so on. Refreshing displays like 10 – 15 times a second should be enough to see clear image of all digits.

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13 Responses to “Control 7 segment LED displays with AVR”

  1. j.sudheer sastry Says:

    Respected sir,

    I have seen your program written for 4 digit 7 segment led display, on 30th may 2006

    If you can do me a favour please send me how to program a 7 segment 8 digit led display using keil cross compiler in c
    language
    Thanking you sir,
    yours sincerely
    J.sudheer sastry

  2. scienceprog Says:

    You have ARM 7 LPC2000 series microcontroller in your mind? If so, then it shouldnt be a problem.

  3. Ivan Christian Says:

    hi,

    nice job! By the way I have some suggestion to improve it.

    I once made my own 7 segment display for AVR. The display consist of 4 digits of seven segment which is drived by AVR in multiplexing way. It is just pretty much the same as you did, except I use 2-to-4 decoder/multiplexer (74HC139) to select which digit is drived at one time. By doing this with the same pin accounts I could drive more 7 segments digits. For instance, for 2 pins I could drive 4 digits rather than 2.

    If you are interested in it, I could send my schematic and othe documents to you (813KB zip file). just drop me a line at chris.ivan@gmail.com.

    Keep up the good work!

    Ivan

  4. scienceprog Says:

    Good point. Id’ like to see your design.

  5. bahman Says:

    i want to drive 32 seven segment by one atmega 8535. how can i do it?

  6. scienceprog Says:

    Well I see one solution to use 5 to 32 decoder like this
    Schematic of decoder

    So you only need 5 lines of microcontroller to select one of 32 displays and 7 lines for driving each segment of seven segment display.
    I hope you get the point.

  7. candd Says:

    I want to drive 143 seven segment LED by Pic18F425 Micro controller.
    HOw can I do it?

  8. Ideal_looking Says:

    I want to use remote control Keyboard to control My Sevent Segment LED display matrix by using ARM 7 LPC2000 , How can I do it?

  9. scienceprog Says:

    if there is no enough i/o pins for LPC2000 MCU use line decoder for LED matrix display and/or for keyboard matrix from remote control. This is wide question. Ask something more concrete that I could really help you ;)

  10. Qahtan Says:

    i am traing to drive 7 segment by Attiny 3213 by using c compiler and i need the c sours code for it pleas

  11. Brian Says:

    I am trying to find info to build a 2 digit display. I want to use it to make a Scoreboard - so click to increase number or click to reset - could you direct me to the right place

  12. mark Says:

    I am trying to create a 3 digit display using 7 segment display. this circuit is a scoreboard that has 5 buttons that can allow you to “add” and “subtract” and also allow you to “set” and “reset”, and “clear” the score. will you help me for the design the circuit?

  13. 7Segment-Display ansteuern - Elektrotechnik @ tutorials.de: Forum, Tutorial, Anleitung, Schulung & Hilfe Says:

    [...] wrde ne Menge Infos auf Anhieb parat haben: http://www.avr-praxis.de/forum/showthread.php?p=348 http://www.scienceprog.com/control-7…lays-with-avr/ http://www.8051projects.net/forum-t8263-last.html mfg chmee __________________ WLAN Antenne [...]

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