Wow that was quick; only 3 working days and 4 MAX7219 chips have just landed on my desk in the UK from San Jose!

Reading up on them they look like really well thought out chips. I've got the rest of the week off work so I'll see what I can do with them.

Cheers,
Jamie

Many thanks Oracle, I've just ordered a couple of MAX7219 samples from Maxim and will have a play.

Cheers,
Jamie

Hi there,

I'm a relative newbie to programming and electronics, with a lot of perseverance I've built my own Arduino controlled home brewery and now my attention has turned to serving the beer! I've got a beer fridge (kegerator) with 4 taps and want to display the amount left in each keg. I'm concentrating on the display first.

I've got 4 CC and 4CA dual segment displays:


I also have a bunch of 74HC595N shift registers. From my research I believe its possible to drive each display via a '595 and PNP / NPN transistors to sink /source current, depending on which type of display is used (not forgetting current limiting resistors on each data pin on the display). I really could do with some pointers as to a schematic using a 328 Arduino chip, I've seen loads of different ways to drive 7 segment displays and I'm a wee bit baffled by it all!

Cheers,
Jamie