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An easy-to-use 6 digit display kit updated via your computer over serial/USB connection -
The USB7 expands most computers with a USB connected 6-digit seven-segment display. Supporting letters, numbers, and a range of punctuation, the USB7 benefits any project requiring highly visible information.
Using common a USB cable for both communication and power, the USB7 requires no special or bulky cables and with a simple virtual-serial port protocol, sending regular ASCII characters is all that's required to control the USB7s full output capacity.
Based on the AVR-CDC project, the USB7 is supported by Windows XP, Windows 2000, OS X, and many Linux variants.
- Simple to use
- The USB interface provides all of the communications and power to the display.
- Simple ASCII data over the virtual serial port controls all of the displays functions.
- Easy to assemble
- All through hole parts.
- An easy kit contains all of the required parts, including a pre-programmed microcontroller.
- Standard 0.56" common-anode display format allows versatility in display selection.
- Comes in standard green readout.
Useful for displaying email/IM notifications, time/date, weather/temperature, countdown timer, word-of-the-day notifier, spouse's shoe size - any text which simply must-be-seen in glowing green! - USB7 6 Digit LED Display Kit
If you're going to have a display from a PC, which can output all sorts of useful data, why oh why would you choose 7 segment LEDs instead of 14 segment LEDs, which can display every letter?
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if this board would accept 6 single digit displays, and would allow for adjacent digits to be rotated 180 degrees, then the maker could decide between displaying decimal points or colons too. that would be nice for displaying time, but not as important if all you want is to implement is a pseudo-alphanumeric display. i can't tell if it could be hacked to provide that functionality, since the sale page lacks any documentation, schematics, or PCB artwork.
does the kit come with any of that info? tell me, what can we learn from this kit besides how to solder and run software/firmware that's already been written? what are the dimensions between the mounting holes?
can the USB interface be left off? how hard is it to implement SPI connectivity and talk to this some other way? would I just need to leave components out of the build, or will I have to go and cut traces?
i understand that not everything can be "open source" and there is a need for some vendors to withhold such information. I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm just trying to hold MAKE and it's affiliates to a higher standard.
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Actually, you would not want to rotate a seven segment LED in order to get a colon. If you look at the LED, you'll see the segments are not quite vertical. You get slightly italic characters. If you rotated an LED, the slants would be opposite, and it would look icky.
But if you're just going with numeric LEDs, it would make sense to use a 4-digit module designed for clocks, that includes a colon.
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@Bob
"If you look at the LED, you'll see the segments are not quite vertical. You get slightly italic characters. If you rotated an LED, the slants would be opposite, and it would look icky."
The slants would be opposite, huh? lol...
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It seems like there are better options for auxiliary displays than 7-segment numeric LED displays... I mean, LED displays certainly have an advantage in terms of visibility, but when you compare the capabilities of this thing to a cheap LCD alphanumeric display or (better yet) a color graphic display from a cell phone... it just seems a bit feeble...
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