Addressable 7-Segment Displays

[@SeanHodgins]

The response to create a library for these has been much greater than anticipated. So I apologize if I don't get back to your email, comment, tweet, etc. I will try my best to get to all of them, even if its not right away.

[@dcxs5896]

Thank you! Please send link to your github repo!

[@Nerdforge]

Wow, these look great! Already thinking about a project I can use them in! Keep it up man

[@SeanHodgins]

Thanks! Can't wait to see them in a video! :D

[@Metalistforlife]

we need this in rgb..... for....reasons. very cool !

[@SeanHodgins]

A little nervous (and excited) about running my own Crowdfunding campaign on my website. Hopefully everything goes okay! This will be sort of a test run. Check them out here: shop.idlehandsdev.com/products/addressable-7-segment-display

[@curiouslycory]

I was having this exact thought the other day! Thanks for taking on this project! Good chance I'll be picking a few up in the near future for some projects.

[@ktisistoukuriou]

Hey Sean! I just found your channel, and I think it's fantastic. Your production quality is great, and the content is paced really well. You're an inspiration. Cheers from Cape Breton.

[@clovekkk]

I did similar display like 20 years ago but with shift registers and latches chips from 40xx family and driven by PC via parallel port.

[@Ed19601]

Ingenious. Though I have no current use for them I can definitely see advantages. Glad to see someone doing his own crowdfunding

[@BloodAsp]

Awesome product, it is hard to believe these did not exist before, so that is awesome!

[@hackbyte]

Whoa .. i'm absolutely thrilled by your idea! It's so cool...... Now, imagine designing a dedicated new small controller like a WS2811 but dedicated to 7segment displays and similar multifunction segment-displays. That way, one can even keep the amount of needed software and translation (numbers to segments/(controller-parts)) down for the controlling MCU .. and display producers maybe could produce completely enclosed standalone variants. *BAMM* We have a wonderful world of displays with low cost of I/O pins and necessary wiring/needed contacts on PCBs.. A very cool thing... You make 2019 having a somewhat cool start in tech. ;)

[@adamarzo559]

Amazing. Very awesome work. Can't wait to play with a few of these.

[@SeanHodgins]

The DIY crowdfund is almost at 1000!

[@danielbull6709]

This is awesome, thanks for sharing your work.

[@atatistcheffs]

Wow, hard to believe nobody thought of this before - great job!

[@SeanHodgins]

Thanks!

[@obviateio]

This is a very cool concept. I love the simplicity of the integration. Looking for to trying to connect them up with an ESP32 running Micropython, lots of very fun possibilities!

[@SeanHodgins]

A lot of possibilities!

[@Certawin]

Nice work on the boards. And congrats too. Saw your 3d printer Christmas ornament. On the make you tube channel. Thought that was really cool.

[@SeanHodgins]

Just saw their vid!

[@Certawin]

@@SeanHodgins Congrats again, Chuckles I thought it was cool to see that on thier channel. Guess you got a lot more Christmas magic then ya thought.

[@MaxintRD]

Nice project! I have some of these chips laying around still. In the datasheet you can read that each output channel can drive current for up to three LEDs in series. I think that would allow for some very nice super-sized displays...

[@SeanHodgins]

Yeah they are fine up to 12V on the LED side.

[@leozendo3500]

Smart!!! I wonder why no one else has considered about this.

[@SeanHodgins]

I’m sure people have, but didn’t act on it.

[@thomasvnl]

That's some cool stuff you got there, nicely done!

[@SeanHodgins]

Thanks!

[@alexlandherr]

Cool idea of digit-by-digit daisy chaining the modules, I use a Raspberry Pi 4B and 2 MAX7219 8 digit 7 segment displays daisy-chained together for a large clock.

[@trentnovelly1712]

Found your channel via the videos you made for Make, and watched several of your most recent videos. Very cool stuff. As an aside: I would argue these are serialized 7segment displays as opposed to addressable in the sense that microcontroller peripherals are addressable (but I suppose that's not really worth getting nitpicky about)

[@SeanHodgins]

Yeah it’s an adopted term for the LED strips. Addressable in the sense that the first LED is 0 then 1, 2, etc.

[@MySupercarLife]

very very clever, good luck with the project

[@dumle29]

Hmm, any blog-post on design choices? I feel like the three ws2811s are an interesting choice, instead of going with a single microcontroller, and writing your own firmware for that (could be ws2812 compatible, or you could make your own less strict protocol). Was that option considered? Was the 2812s found to be cheaper in quantity?

[@SeanHodgins]

No blog post on design choices, just some posts reiterating mostly what I said in the video. Generally a single microcontroller is not going to be able to directly replace this without additional components. These chips are off the shelf ready to control an LED using current control internally. Single resistor and capacity per chip. They don't need to be programmed, and they're less expensive. Its what they're made for.

[@bryanjcera]

Brilliant!!! Immediately ordered 10.

[@evren.builds]

I'm new to the electronics hobby myself and was just working on some 7-Segment displays. At first I did not now what shift registers multiplexing and charlieplexing were and was quite annoyed with the number of pins you needed. But even after shift registers and multiplexing (which was quite hard to include in my code) I still needed a ton of pins for the 4 I wanted to control. Thanks for showing a way to simplify them. Btw how did you think of doing this? Had no one done it before? Did you need it for a project of yours?

[@SeanHodgins]

Yeah they can be a bit of a pain. Hopefully these work for you! - I'm not sure when I thought of this. I think it was when someone pointed out that the WS2811 does controls the LED with current, which made me realize that they didn't need to be RGB LEDs, and any colour would work.

[@MaxintRD]

Using shift registers also takes up a lot of processing power. Using a LED driver takes the load away from the MCU. BTW. There are many other solutions. LED drivers chips such as the TM1640 can drive 8x16 leds using only two lines (clock and data). The WS2811 has the advantage that each LED has 256 levels of intensity.

[@claricevictor5547]

You’re basically speaking gibberish to me but I freaking love your videos:)

[@gregersn]

Did you consider any other controllers? Like the one in the APA102 LEDs, so that there would not have to be any timing concerns with the data signal? Shame to have interrupts disabled on the Arduino to display digits. But I do like the concept.

[@SeanHodgins]

Does the APA102 have a standalone IC without the LEDs embedded?

[@gregersn]

Hmm, that is a question that I really didn't think about before commenting. I was only concerned about the interrupts-issue that arises with the WS2811. That does complicate things, of course.

[@MakunaRGBIC]

Any thoughts on making one with a colon; so a clock display could be easily created?

[@Maher-]

Is it possible to use the neopixel as a stopwatch or counter instead of using the small 7 segment display?

[@BrianLough]

These look great Sean, well done!

[@SeanHodgins]

Thanks Brian!

[@BrianLough]

@@SeanHodgins sent you a message on discord

[@VinceTibo]

Dude this is fantastic, I'm aspiring to be as competent as you in electronics! How did you acquire the knowledge you have? Did you study electronics in school? Again, wonderful work as always!!

[@frontier9]

Nice idea - its years later and I can get 14 seg with backpack chip to give me 4 digits and not too expensive. However, i've been through a complex shift reg build to make an RGB 7 seg set work ... so wondering about this.

[@BeckyStern]

So cool, great work Sean!

[@SeanHodgins]

Thanks Becky! I should use them make my own version of the social media stats counter you made.

[@BuiltNotBoughtUK]

I know this is a bit old now but is there a port of the software to Pico yet?

[@brianrogers1799]

This is insanely cool man. Insanely cool.

[@mystamo]

One thing I think you may be super into working with me on would be Electrolumenecent Paint. Sort of like Lumilor but I've obtained the base compounds. I want to try doing something like Applied science did but maybe a bit more advanced... or less :D

[@setrik_az363]

I once made a big 7seg display with 15 5mm LEDs for each segment for a factory and I used the same method here. so cool seeing a big ahh dislpay using just 1 pin of an arduino lol

[@josedominguez2021]

Superb!!! Nice to meetyou.

[@byMarekZet]

Brilliant to use WS2811 not for RGB-led but for 7-Segment Display. This gives other uses than for eg TM1628.

[@tablatronix]

well done, a nice low component count, was the unit cost as low as I estimated?, any unexpected gotchas? Another cool thing about this is you gain the ability to do pwn animations also

[@SeanHodgins]

They were about as costly as expected. Can probably be done for nearly nothing at the 10,000 quantity level, at 1000 is still a little more than I was hoping. The fading ability is really cool, and hopefully will be implemented a little better than I have done it for the demo. haha

[@UnexpectedMaker]

What a clever idea! Well done Sean :-)

[@SeanHodgins]

Thanks! They're a little smaller than your Neo7Segments. :D I still need to get some of those.

[@1_HighDuke]

You're a wizard, Harry!

[@rushikesh2]

Awesome man loved it... You saved alot of efforts thanks alot keep going 👍

[@יונתןברייטגנד]

Now thats how mafia works

[@BenPienig]

These are awesome! Have you thought about crowdsupply instead of kickstarter?

[@SeanHodgins]

Not doing Kickstarter either. I'm doing a DIY crowdfund.

[@geekjoan]

Realy nice! Would you conside making just the boards, so we could fit displays of diffrent size of our own?

[@SeanHodgins]

GeekJoan the displays and the layout of pins are often associated with the size. So everything is pretty difficult to standardize. If I sold just the boards you would basically just have the buy the same display that I solder on. You can of course modify my files to use the display you want though! Common anode.

[@geekjoan]

@@SeanHodgins True, but that is what cables are for... =)

[@SeanHodgins]

I see what you mean, like a bread board version? I think that would be great too. Ill do that.

[@groovysanta4126]

Wow! I've been hoping someone would build this. I've just one question - Support for a larger seven segment display? I would like to drive 3 pairs of 7-Segment digits, specifically(YUNSUN ysd-1600ar6f-89) . Will unit do this?

[@SeanHodgins]

I’m not sure, it depends on the current and voltage requirements. Check out the datasheet for the WS2811.

[@bornach]

Would 5 WS2811s fit on that PCB for 14 segment alphanumeric displays?

[@zachburke8906]

bornach I don’t think so, however you might be able to fit a different type. One of these would likely fit fine and do the job. You will need to use more pins however, but only 2-5. www.mouser.com/Mobile/Texas-Instruments/Semiconductors/Driver-ICs/LED-Lighting-Drivers/TLC5928-Series/_/N-7zhqf?P=1yy25r5Z1z0zls6&gclid=Cj0KCQiA1NbhBRCBARIsAKOTmUvsEaIjgfxLie7hveum7aTU9dbZsTk_WVIliBwKRCxnwJO7B1abV2QaAiNXEALw_wcB

[@nothanks7752]

well that's fucking genius and I'm annoyed I didn't think of it first. good job man.

[@ahmedal-musharraf9242]

Well done!, instantly subbed, keep up the great content :)

[@ChunkySteveo]

Very cool Sean!

[@mihaelpanjkrc7870]

I will look into making a library for this

[@EightlinesVideo]

The big question is how many digits of Pi do I want to pre order?

[@SeanHodgins]

Haha, That would be a fun experiment. How many digits of Pi can these drive before the current is overloaded.

[@tyler-simoni]

I would be interested in trying to build a library for those!

[@CaptM44]

I was looking for something just like this for the larger 1.8inch 7seg displays. Also I was looking into one for a 14seg display. The chaining is perfect though.

[@SeanHodgins]

Should work for them, just need to make the board!

[@connorchapman4223]

Those look amazing and usefull. I think it would be cool to daisy chain them so theat you can display the year, the date, the time and seconds

[@SeanHodgins]

You totally can. I was thinking Back to the Future clock.

[@Centar1964]

I would have thought this would have been done already. These should be commercially available, china should make em for free 99 on fleabay...Love these real ideas that make ya say "now why didn't I think of that"

[@SeanHodgins]

There are other solutions, but nothing as simple I think. At least IMO.

[@TalpaDK]

And here I were considering WS2811 complicated multiplexing, oh well... but I suppose that the dimming option is sort of neat :)

[@SeanHodgins]

Haha, much simpler because these hold their PWM value, so you can set a number and let the MCu do whatever it wants until you want to write another number.

[@theedge5584]

I need a Digital Gauge cluster for my car, or need to learn more n make my own any ideas??????

[@SeanHodgins]

You could use these, and a GPS module.

[@hashimiqbal6822]

How do u connect the 7 segment display to arduino and where do i connect on that white board

[@SeanHodgins]

The HCC module?

[@BycromeAlgeraist]

Thanks Sean, very cool!

[@SeanHodgins]

Thanks!

[@JeremyCook]

Very clever - nicely done!

[@SeanHodgins]

Thanks Jeremy!

[@troseberry91585]

My mind is blown right now. Why has nobody thought of this before? So simple. I know that the neopixel library can be used with the raspberry pi. How difficult do you think it would be to use these with it? Such a good idea though!

[@zachburke8906]

Tim Roseberry not difficult.

[@SeanHodgins]

Easy with raspberry pi, though I think there is something you have to do with the audio to get the pin to work at 400khz. Should be easy.

[@krackpack1]

A circuitpython library would be cool

[@joshuamacdonald8785]

This is so brilliant

[@HighFlyD]

Amazing job :)

[@Vidicon31]

Very cool I have written a basic library for them. And I have made a pull request on your GitHub page. Maybe You can test if it works on your displays.

[@fsociety852]

Thank you for explaining👽

[@printf]

That's a great idea !

[@wvijay]

Super Cool

[@proxy1035]

To be honest I'm disappointed you didn't explain anything about how it or the chip works. I love in depth technical videos

[@SeanHodgins]

Thought about explaining more about the circuitry, but I didn't end up getting into it. But I wouldn't have too much knowledge about how the chip works internally. Do you mean how they are controlled?

[@proxy1035]

@@SeanHodgins yes, how it actually manages to control a theoretical infinite amount of LEDs. cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/WS2811.pdf after looking at the datasheet myself it just looks like it sends information in terms of 24bit chunks. so the first 24b go to the first connected IC. the second chunk also go to the first IC but get passed through to the second IC, and that keeps going until it reaches the end. there also seems to be a RESET code. which makes sense as you want to change the data again after some time. you could've put this in the video it doesn't seem that complex

[@zachburke8906]

Proxy I do think it’s important to remember not everyone who watches these don’t have a lot of knowledge on how this stuff works. I’ve made the mistake plenty of times trying to explain something i view as basic to someone who isn’t too technologically savvy and realizing how complex and how in-depth I need to go for them to understand. I’m sure even a decent percent of arduino users would have to have a lot of basics explained to understand it when I started arduino I wouldn’t be able to tell you much about bits or bytes or words and it was well over a year before I properly started learning about them. It’s just not for this channel imo, for those who want to know about the ics can look at data sheets, and for those who just want the displays they get the info they want.

[@zeffofx]

Very cool

[@testchannel1834]

Great video , How about doing a video for us Raspberry Pi users . Maybe use it to display output from a dht22 temp / press

[@SeanHodgins]

Sure, Ill make an example for Raspberry Pi!

[@lucasc5622]

now THIS is cool

[@acelectronic2831]

Good for project

[@ammorapl]

Takie proste a jakie genialne!

[@MikeMcRoberts]

Great! Now please make some that are RGB.

[@dleivam]

Awesome!

[@azimyth1542]

Are you still looking for someone to write a library for these? I'd be happy to take a stab at it.

[@EndermanTheMan]

That’s epic!!!

[@wowtah]

very cool!

[@Stefan_Van_pellicom]

Excellent idea ! Hope you get rich ! :)

[@SeanHodgins]

Just enough to keep doing what I enjoy.

[@valdosh69]

Omg, this is so cool

[@vcokltfre]

Cool Edit: Very cool

[@sagarghatti]

nice experiment . and secret too :) I like that .its uniqe .

[@explosivemochi6205]

Can you make addressable 8x8 matrixs

[@SeanHodgins]

I think there are a lot of those out there already!

[@garethronaldo8692]

finally dude 🤗👍👍

[@garethronaldo8692]

yaaaaaaay 😁

[@chirambaht]

I just have to say, Sean you are a genius! Amazing

[@KitarpLive]

Yay website

[@MakunaRGBIC]

About that library, it would easy to expand my current library NeoPixelBus, to support this. If interested in some collaboration, let me know.

[@benargee]

This is a cool idea but I feel like using a ws2811 to simply turn an led on or off is a waste of resources.

[@SeanHodgins]

Benargee that’s literally what their built for. :)

[@benargee]

@@SeanHodgins well they are built for a pwm output for brightness so there is an unnecessary level of resolution used by the mcu just to use binary on off. I just feel like a simpler chip could achieve a pwr/gnd/data(in|out) interface. Based on the datasheet each ws2811 accepts 24bits for RGB. 8 bits per colour. In your design you're sending 72bits of data per digit(3x ws2811) where you could instead send 7-8bits depending on decimal usage.

[@SeanHodgins]

Benargee being able to set the brightness of a 7 segment display is a huge feature, normally done by other more difficult methods in the programming. You don’t always want to run them full brightness.

[@benargee]

@@SeanHodgins absolutely, but to run each segment brightness individually has few practical use cases. I feel like the entire array would usually run at the same brightness which would consume much less data than the current implementation. I don't know if Such a chip exists, but I feel like this application could be better implemented from a theoretical point of view.

[@MaxintRD]

@@benargee - For that usage there are plenty different LED driver chips available. I recently had some fun with the TM16xx chip family. They do offer some brightness control, but only for the whole display, not individual segments. Main advantage is low price plus support for button-arrays.

[@wesleythomas6858]

Very cool. Have been playing a lot with can bus which relies on addressing similar to what you’ve been doing. Single IC’s exist which have a can bus controller and 8 IO pins (also some configurable to PWM and analogue in) such as... cdn-reichelt.de/documents/datenblatt/A200/MCP25050_MIC.pdf

[@kondzio2003]

Cool

[@SeanHodgins]

Thanks!

[@prateekmahajan1929]

Could've used a 74hc595

[@SeanHodgins]

False.

[@petermorrow3565]

This was a nice distraction. 👌 . BLNT

[@SeanHodgins]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@RSAkidinUSA]

Awesome project, this is a great idea I'm surprised nobody has done yet! I'd be willing to help you get the standalone library working, if you're interested just shoot me a DM

[@martinj9647]

If you Google "ws2812 7 segment"(or WS2811) you'll see hundreds of projects doing effectively the same thing at various scales from the tiny little .28" 3 digit modules up to several foot tall custom made digits. Still a cool project that looks well executed thus far

[@CerebralDad]

I can create the Library

[@mikelemon5109]

It'd be better if you used a single MCU and just program it before or after soldering.

[@SeanHodgins]

Source?

[@mikelemon5109]

@@SeanHodgins Of what?

[@SeanHodgins]

Factual evidence for your statement. Why would it be better?

[@kionmahuermicio9860]

All is ok, until you use the "library"...

[@503ali]

Hey nice job great idea to use ws2811 chip for that....... OK NOW youTube set it up to make money on the view and what not and it has worked. I don't pay in money but I pay in time but a lot of "youtubers" now want patrons on top of what they make from KZbin and any side advertising.. just sad to see greed come to somthing so great well when people enjoyed making videos.

[@SeanHodgins]

What?

[@MaxintRD]

@503ali - Unfortunately KZbin doesn't just pay for views and advertisement income is very low even when channels have 100K+ subscribers. I get no (zero) income from the few videos I made, even though they were viewed thousands times. Many youtubers wouldn't be able to spend the amount of time needed to produce quality content if it wasn't for Patreon. Sean makes great content and he doesn't beg for viewers to become patrons. Those that do get some nice benifits too. Sean also published many free open source projects on GitHub, Hackster, HackADay and Instructables. What "greed" do you see here?