Interfacing Seven Segment Displays
Seven segment displays are very common for electronic product to display numerical output. Many common devices like calculators, watches, electronic weighing scales,ovens etc use them. You must have also seen lifts display the current floor numbers in seven segment displays. So in this article I will show you how to use 7-Segment displays in your own projects. Fundamentals A seven-segment display is so named because it is divided into seven different segments that can be switched on or off. The different combination of these segments switched on produces different English numbers. The display also has a decimal point. Fig: Seven Segment Display Fig: ‘4’ The figure shows a seven segment display and the names of the various segments. For example if you want to display number 4 then segments that will be ‘on’ are {f,g,b,c} while rest are ‘off’.Basically the seven segments are just LEDs. The one common end of all the leds are connected while the rest are available. Depending on whether anode or cathode of all the leds are common they are of two types. 1) Common anode 2)Common cathode Fig: Common Cathode Type Fig: Common Anode Type PIN Configuration Now you know the basic of these displays, to use them you should know the pin configuration of the commercially available displays. As you must have […]