7-Segment Serial Display

• Manufacturer: 100LED.com + Sparkfun
• Voltage: +5 V
• Communication: TTL or SPI
• Doc Sheet

The 7-Segment Serial Display turns the thirteen pins necessary to control a 4-digit 7-segment display into just one or three. The display will give you full control of all digits, decimal points, the colon and the apostrophe. At the heart of the display is an ATMega328 which controls all the serial communications and the 4-digit 7-segment display through an easy to use API.

The Serial 7-Segment Display can be controlled in one of two ways: (1) serial TTL communication or (2) SPI serial communication. Regardless of which method you use to communicate with the display, the display is controlled with 4-byte packets and special 2-byte commands.

Features:

• Limits the number of microcontroller pins needed to control 4-digit display
• 9600 default baud rate
• Pins broken out to a 0.1" pitch header
• Overall Display: 40.18 x 12.8 mm (1.58 x 0.50")
• Digit Height: 10mm (0.39")

Hooking it up

The Serial 7-Segment Display uses either 1 wires for serial TTL communication with a microcontroller, or 3 wires for SPI serial communication. With both methods, display data is sent in 4-byte packets (one byte for each digit), and special commands are sent in 2-byte packets. The use of 4-byte display data can be circumvented with special commands, as they allow you to write output to specific digits.

• TTL
  • RX – TX of microcontroller
  • VCC – input voltage (between +2.6 and +5.5 V)
  • GND - ground

• SPI
  • VCC - input voltage (between +2.6 and +5.5 V)
  • GND - ground
  • MOSI
  • CSN
  • SCK

Code

Availability

• Sparkfun Electronics (Red) - [1]

References

• Datasheet - http://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Components/LED/7-Segment/SFE-0012-DS-7segmentSerial-v41.pdf
• SoftwareSerial Documentation on arduino.cc

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