Interface a Seven Segment
Display to an Arduino
For many applications, there's no need to use a more
expensive liquid crystal display to display data. A simple
seven-segment display is sufficient.
If your Arduino application only needs to display numbers, consider using a seven-
segment display. The severn-segment display has seven LEDs arranged in the shape
of number eight. They are easy to use and cost effective. The picture below shows a
typical seven-segment display.
Seven segment displays are of two types: common anode and common cathode.
The Internal structure of both types is nearly the same. The difference is the polarity
of the LEDs and common terminal.
In a common cathode seven-segment display (the one we used in the
experiments), all seven LEDs plus a dot LED have the cathodes connected to pins 3
and pin 8. To use this display, we need to connect GROUND to pin 3 and pin 8 and,
and connect +5V to the other pins to make the individual segments light up.
The following diagram shows the internal structure of common-cathode seven-
segment display:
The common anode display is the exact opposite. In a common-anode display, the
positive terminal of all the eight LEDs are connected together and then connected to
pin 3 and pin 8. To turn on an individual segment, you ground one of the pins. The
following diagram shows the internal structure of the common-anode seven-segment
display.
The seven segment are labelled a-g, with the dot being "dp," as shown in the figure
below:
To display a particular number, you turn on the individual segments as shown in the
table below:
Experiment 1
In this experiment, we will simply turn on and turn off the LEDs to get familiar with
how a seven-segment display works.
Hardware Required
1 x seven segment display (common cathode)
1 x Arduino UNO
1 x breadboard
jumper wires
Wiring Diagram
In this circuit, the pins of seven-segment display are connected to Arduino pins 2-9,
as shown in the table below. Common pins (pin 3 and pin 8) are connected to GND
and dp is left unconnected, because it is not used in this experiment
Seven segment pins Arduino pins Wire Color
1(e) 6 orange
2(d) 5 white
3,8(COM) GND n/a
c 4 yellow
5(dp) -
6(b) 3 red
7(a) 2 blue
9(f) 7 cyan
10(g) 8 green
Circuit:
Code:
Experiment 2
Description
In this tutorial, we will be interfacing a seven segment display with Arduino mega and
learn to display a count down from nine with a delay of a second, on seven segment
display.
