Anyone familiar with driving a 7-segment display?

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Homercidal

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I've an idea that might use a 7-segment LED display (or two, I'm not sure yet), and I wondered how hard it is to set up something like this.

The idea is to use a position sensor, or a pressure sensor to increment, or decrement the numbers on a display.

An alternative would be a 5 position LED bar stack to give approximate position/pressure.

I can solder up stuff, but the theory is beyond me still. I feel there must be premade boards that will allow for this to be done fairly easily.
 
Whichever is easiest/cheapest! I haven't decided on a design yet, I'm considering the difficulty.

One of my thoughts is to use a scrap yard Throttle Position Sensor. They are everywhere and not very pricey. The shape makes them attractive for their compactness as well.

As a pin raises and lowers, it rotates the TPS and varies the voltage. That could be programmed to change the display. Or that's the basic theory. I think a TPS uses 9V.
 
Sounds like a good job for arduino which is like 30 and you can get a 2 line multi character display for about 20. Is that within the budget. If you want to display characters, I think you need a Micro controller. If you just want more lights from more voltage, you could make a simple circuit to do that.
 
Yeah, I could go from nuts and bolts all the way up to wireless enabled web updating. I'm thinking about something even less expensive than an arduino or even a 1-wire system. I think at this point I want it self-contained. If I could get a voltage sensor for 1-wire, I'd set one of those up, but for now I'm thinking simple electronic battery-powered indicator. An LED stack would do the job, and a 2 digit 7segment display would be more than accurate enough, and a single would do the job.

So I'm feeling out whether it's worth it for the extra work.
 
A 7-segment display is just 7 leds arranged in the package, with either a common anode or common cathode.

A driver circuit/chip is used to decode and drive the individual leds according to the input lines (usually Binary Coded Decimal).

If you're still in the just "solder stuff together", go the extra few bucks and do the same with the arduino + 2 line lcd type of setup. They're pretty much plug-and-play with some appropriate coding.
 
If you go the microcontroller route, I would suggest getting a 1 or 2 line LCD. They're dirt cheap (~5$) and you could find the code you need to run them for all of the major microcontroller brands. Arduino is popular and probably has a library that will work out-of-the-box.
 
It's been about 15 years since I worked on something like this back in college, so I don't remember too many details, but my guess it is not worth the time/effort.

If you're talking about using a discrete 7-segment component, you'll also likely need a decoder/driver chip and probably still need some additional components, most likely a microcontroller and more.

The previous suggestion of using an Arduino is good since it and a LCD matrix will have all the hardware you need. I wouldn't want to mess with the 7-segment on its own unless I really wanted to learn the basics of this stuff.
 
manofleisure said:
It's been about 15 years since I worked on something like this back in college, so I don't remember too many details, but my guess it is not worth the time/effort.

If you're talking about using a discrete 7-segment component, you'll also likely need a decoder/driver chip and probably still need some additional components, most likely a microcontroller and more.

The previous suggestion of using an Arduino is good since it and a LCD matrix will have all the hardware you need. I wouldn't want to mess with the 7-segment on its own unless I really wanted to learn the basics of this stuff.
Click to expand...

+1 7-segment displays aren't worth the time/effort for what you get out of em.
 

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