7 Segment Serial Display Using Serial Communication

Using Arduino Programming Questions
1

Hello Everyone,
I have just bought the 7 segment serial display from sparkfun. 7-Segment Serial Display - Yellow - COM-09764 - SparkFun Electronics I wanted to use serial communication to control this. I have seen examples using the software serial library in Arduino 1.0, but I would prefer greatly to just use Serial.print (or write, I don't know which one) to control this. Here is the current code.

// 7 segment sketch

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);  // start serial communication
}

void loop() {
  Serial.print(1024);
  delay(1000);
  Serial.print(4201);
  delay(1000);
}

It comes out as 1420, then 4102. Could someone help?

2

Looks like you had an unintended character sent out, causing the data to look like its wrapped around.
Maybe send out some 0's in void setup to start, then send your 4 bytes.

3

Grumpy Mike and myself are both super excited with this product (at least the red version). Read here:

OP should consider extra fire insurance coverage when using this device :wink:

4

I saw both your comments the other day. Someone commented further down that it might be because they are using PWM and they thought they could get away with it. I haven't looked at the source code to see if this even makes sense.

5

Sacman:
I saw both your comments the other day. Someone commented further down that it might be because they are using PWM and they thought they could get away with it. I haven't looked at the source code to see if this even makes sense.

I just looked again after you mentioned this other comment that said someone explained it here:

but there's no explanation. Maybe someone removed it.

For sure "Using PWM" or "running very low duty cycle" are not magic words to ward off damage due to over current. :wink: