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5.2 - Number Display

LED Segment Display can be seen everywhere in life. For example, on an air conditioner, it can be used to display temperature; on a traffic indicator, it can be used to display a timer.

The LED Segment Display is essentially a device packaged by 8 LEDs, of which 7 strip-shaped LEDs form an “8” shape, and there is a slightly smaller dotted LED as a decimal point. These LEDs are marked as a, b, c, d, e, f, g, and dp. They have their own anode pins and share cathodes. Their pin locations are shown in the figure below.

img_7seg_cathode

This means that it needs to be controlled by 8 digital signals at the same time to fully work and the 74HC595 can do this.

Required Components

In this project, we need the following components.

It’s definitely convenient to buy a whole kit, here’s the link:

Name

ITEMS IN THIS KIT

PURCHASE LINK

Kepler Kit

450+

Kepler Ultimate Kit

You can also buy them separately from the links below.

SN

COMPONENT INTRODUCTION

QUANTITY

PURCHASE LINK

1

Raspberry Pi Pico W

1

BUY

2

Micro USB Cable

1

3

Breadboard

1

BUY

4

Jumper Wires

Several

BUY

5

Resistor

1(220Ω)

BUY

6

7-segment Display

1

BUY

7

74HC595

1

BUY

Schematic

sch_74hc_7seg

Wiring

wiring_74hc_7seg

Wiring

74HC595

LED Segment Display

Q0

a

Q1

b

Q2

c

Q3

d

Q4

e

Q5

f

Q6

g

Q7

dp

Code

Note

  • You can open the file 5.2_number_display.ino under the path of kepler-kit-main/arduino/5.2_number_display.

  • Or copy this code into Arduino IDE.

  • Don’t forget to select the board(Raspberry Pi Pico) and the correct port before clicking the Upload button.

When the program is running, you will be able to see the LED Segment Display display 0~9 in sequence.

How it works?

shiftOut() will make 74HC595 output 8 digital signals. It outputs the last bit of the binary number to Q0, and the output of the first bit to Q7. In other words, writing the binary number “00000001” will make Q0 output high level and Q1~Q7 output low level.

Suppose that the 7-segment Display display the number “1”, we need to write a high level for b, c, and write a low level for a, d, e, f, g, and dg. That is, the binary number “00000110” needs to be written. For readability, we will use hexadecimal notation as “0x06”.

Similarly, we can also make the LED Segment Display display other numbers in the same way. The following table shows the codes corresponding to these numbers.

Glyph Code

Numbers

Binary Code

Hex Code

0

00111111

0x3f

1

00000110

0x06

2

01011011

0x5b

3

01001111

0x4f

4

01100110

0x66

5

01101101

0x6d

6

01111101

0x7d

7

00000111

0x07

8

01111111

0x7f

9

01101111

0x6f

Write these codes into shiftOut() to make the LED Segment Display display the corresponding numbers.