Embedded Lab | Embedded Systems tutorials, projects, and more …

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

Introducing a new serial (SPI) 8-digit seven segment LED display module using MAX7219

Posted on December 29, 2012 by R-B 26 comments

Seven segment LED displays are brighter, more attractive and provide a far viewing distance as well as a wider viewing angle as compared to LCD displays. The major drawback of using seven segment LEDs is they are resource-hungry. Time-division multiplexing is the most common technique of interfacing 7-segment LEDs to microcontrollers. With this technique, an 8-digit seven segment LED display with the decimal point requires at list 16 I/O pins of the microcontroller, which is quite a lot. Consequently, their use with low pin-count microcontrollers (such as PIC12F series) is not practically feasible. Here’s our latest version of the MAX7219 based serial seven

Netduino Day 2: Interfacing a Character LCD

Posted on December 28, 2012 by ANir 6 comments

Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) are a great choice of output device for displaying alphanumeric characters in real time. They are also very useful if your project requires an interactive user interface for data input. Besides, they are inexpensive, consume less power than LED displays, and give a more professional look to your project. Today we will explore how to interface an HD44780 based character LCD to Netduino to display alphanumeric characters. For technical details of the HD44780 driver, please read its datasheet as well as its interfacing example with chipKit.

« Older Entries Recent Entries »