I have acquired 4 Electroluminescent displays and they are 8 segment displays. I have been looking for a way to control them and was having a hard time finding a chip capable of handling 8 segment displays. The MAX7219 is meant for controlling 7 segment displays. I was wondering if it would be possible to use that chip for controlling the displays.
Use the MAX7219 "no-decode" mode for individual access to all 8 segments. You'll have to write your own the segment encoder.
I wonder how a '4' would look like on that funny display.
The MAX7219 is actually actually meant for controlling 8-segment displays.
People just tend to call all of them "7 segment displays" because they don't count the decimal point. But that really makes it 8.
A single MAX7219 can control up to 8 of those digits. If you look at a picture of "MAX7219 Pinout", you will notice it has pins for "Segment DP, Seg A, Seg B....Seg G" that makes 8. Then "Digit 0, Dig 1, Dig 2....Dig7" that makes 8.
First step is you have to know if they are common anode or common cathode.
If your displays are common cathode, then each individual digit display will have its cathode wired to its own Digit 0, Digit 1, etc pin. Then the rest of the pins will be for the segments and you can wire those right up to the Seg pins.
You will have to map out the characters you want, unless you've found someone who happen to have that same display and already done so. It would help if you drew a picture of the display, and gave the segments labels, such as "Seg A is the top, Seg B is the right outside, Seg C is the bottom," etc.
Hi,
The OPs panel.
Does it have a make and model number?
Does it come with power supply?
How is it interfaced?
When I google, the results indicate an AC power supply.
Have you researched this?
Tom.... 
Totally missed the electroluminescent part. EL wire/panels do indeed use AC. So there will be a power inverter involved. Need to figure out how the thing is wired, an inverter for each segment is not going to be the case.
I had done some research on this and found a Triac that can handle the inverter power supply. My next step is to create a board model with the triacs and optoisolators.