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Monthly Archives: January 2013

Netduino Day 4 : Eight Digit Seven Segment LED Display with MAX7219

Posted on January 30, 2013 by ANir 2 comments

In Day 3 tutorial, we learnt basics of seven segment LED displays and discussed about a time-division multiplexing technique that reduces the number of required microcontroller I/O pins to drive multiple seven segment LED displays. Today we will move a step further and discuss about a serial interface (SPI) for driving 8 seven segment LED displays. The technique uses MAXIM’s MAX7219 LED driver chip that allows you to control 8 (or more in cascade configuration) common-cathode seven segment LED displays with only 3 I/O pins of Netduino. For illustrative purpose, we will use our 8-digit serial seven segment LED (8DSSSLED) display module here. The benefit

Understanding Logic Analyzer basics using SCANALOGIC-2 EDU KIT

Posted on January 25, 2013 by R-B 3 comments

A logic analyzer is an excellent tool for capturing many digital signals at once and displaying their timing relationships. It is particularly useful in verifying and debugging digital circuits. This tutorial is intended to provide a quick overview of a logic analyzer tool and its uses in analyzing and decoding data flowing on multiple signal lines or bus in a digital system. The logic analyzer tool is extremely helpful in troubleshooting problems arising from timing violations and transients on buses. In this article, I am going to use the SCANALOGIC-2 educational kit from IKALOGIC to illustrate very basic features of

Netduino Day 3 – Multiplexed Seven-Segment LED displays

Posted on January 17, 2013 by ANir 6 comments

A visual output always adds value to any project. In this third day tutorial, we are going to display some numeric, alphabetic as well as two symbolic characters on a 4-digit seven segment LED module. The way we are interfacing the seven segments LEDs is known as multiplexing, which allows to save some I/O pins of Netduino as compared to driving them individually. The seven segment LEDs are resource and power hungry, but we are going to do this experiment just to get our feet wet in the microcontroller or embedded world and to understand the basics of a seven

Soldering instructions for the TrH Meter kit

Posted on January 3, 2013 by R-B 7 comments

First of all I would like to thank all of those who preordered the TrH Meter kits during the fundraising campaign that we ran on Tindie. It’s because of your support that we successfully launched this project. Please follow the soldering instructions provided below while building the TrH Meter.

Soldering the SPI7SEGDISP8.56 serial 8-digit seven segment LED display kit

Posted on January 1, 2013 by R-B One comment

SPI7SEGDISP8.56 is a MAX7219 based serial 8-digit seven segment LED display module. With this display module, you can easily add 8 digits of seven segment LED displays to your project using only 3 I/O pins, and provides full control of all the digit segments including decimal points. You can even cascade two or more of these modules together without sacrificing any extra I/O pin. You can buy SPI7SEGDISP8.56 display kit on Tindie for only $12.00. SPI7SEGDISP8.56 PCB is double layer. The top layer consists of two 4-digit CC LED display modules (Disp1 and Disp2) arranged in a row and header connectors (JP1 and JP2), whereas the bottom