# Help with 7 segment LED



## snake126 (Dec 16, 2010)

Hello everyone, I am working on a project where I would like to install one of these:
10pcs , 0.8inch 7 segment LED display common cathode - eBay (item 310308356317 end time Apr-01-11 12:20:24 PDT)

and have it display completely random things (dont even have to be numbers) How could I possible go about doing this?

Thanks


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## octaneman (May 13, 2009)

Hi snake126

You will have to be more specific, there are many types of displays that require specific drivers for it to work. For example; Using a PIC microcontroller to drive an LCD display.


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## Galatic (Mar 20, 2008)

Your using a 7-segment display with a common cathode.

It's basically just 7 LED's. each LED has a pin associated with it. You connect the cathode pin to ground and if you plug any of the other pins to positive you should see the LED its connected to light up.









Also do you have a data sheet for those displays because it would contain a pinout (list of what each pin does).


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## octaneman (May 13, 2009)

To determine what you want to display you need to write down a truth table of which segments you want to display and then make up your circuit. 


Here's an arbitrary circuit I made up using switches.


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