Hello, I am thinking about creating as my first arduino project, a simple counting device, that will increment the count up by one everytime a push button is pressed. I was thinking that it would be fun to use an LED matrix to represent the count rather than use an lcd display. There would be five columns each having 9 LEDs, each column would represent a number group with for example the first column representing "ones", the second "10s" the third "hundreds", etc. So if the count were nine, the 9th led in the first column would be lit, and if the count were 11, the 1st LED in the 1st column would be lit and the first LED in the second column would be lit. I am looking for general guidance on how to get started on this, so any input would be greatly appreciated.
Should be fairly easy. Treat it like any LED matrix. Group them into 'rows' and 'columns'. 5x9 would be easiest to program, 7x7 would also work but doesn't save any pins. Connect a pin to each row and a pin to each column. When a 'row' pin is HIGH and a 'column' pin is LOW the light at that intersection will be lit. Any other combination (HIGH/HIGH, LOW/HIGH, LOW/LOW) and the light won't be lit. Set the column pins for a the first row, turn on the first row pin, delay(2), turn off the row pin, set the column pins for the second row...
To get the 14 output pins and an input pin for your pushbutton you will have to use some of the analog pins as digital pins. Just call them 14..19 (for Analog1..Analog5). Leave digital pins 0 and 1 unused so you can use the Serial.print() commands for debugging.