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These acquainted crimson 7-segment LEDs are designed to every show a person digit, or should you’re 8-year-old me, perhaps to string collectively some letters, like “8008135” that I used to assume was me being intelligent with my outdated Texas Devices calculator. But it surely seems that with the correct components and electronics abilities, you possibly can really flip these 7-segment shows right into a display screen of kinds.
Electronics wizard Frugha constructed this cool trying LED show that makes use of an array of 144 particular person 7-segment shows. They’ve been wired collectively and programmed to show a big digital clock face throughout a number of smaller shows. Every of the shows has Eight LED segments which might be individually managed, leading to a complete of 1152 segments which can be utilized to create photographs. The show is managed utilizing an Arduino Nano and 18 MAX7219 LED driver chips. Since every phase might be independently addressed, it’s potential to show customized photographs on the segments. I’m assuming with slightly tweaking, it may be potential to even show video utilizing this technique.
It’s a extremely slick thought, and one which’s already impressed at the very least one different builder to create their very own model. John Bradnam took Frugha’s design and shrunk it right down to roughly 25% of the scale of the unique. He additionally enhanced the supply code to present it an alarm operate, and added a configuration display screen for setting the time, date, and alarm, and restricted help for various show fonts.
Should you’re fascinated about constructing certainly one of these neat 7-segment clocks for your self, you possibly can take a look at Frugha’s construct particulars on Instructables, and Bradnam’s model on Hackster.io. There’s additionally a very good dialogue thread over on HackADay with extra concepts for enhancements.
[via HackADay and Instructables]
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