Requesting recommendations for 14 segment driver.

Other Hardware LEDs and Multiplexing
1

I have been using the MAX9654 to drive common cathode LEDs and while I have gotten it to work despite its irregular timing it has taken up a fair chunk of time and resources. I noticed that MAX products are talked about on this forum a fair bit but I was curious if there are comparable products that others like to use.

Especially since this chip can cost upwards of 30$ after shipping which seems excessive.

If you have used another 14-segment, common cathode chip, and believe it is better I'd like to know so I can do some research into options for Version 2 of my board.

2

Why not just two high-current output shift registers? cd74AC164.

3

If you have used another 14-segment, common cathode chip, and believe it is better I'd like to know

I used 2xMAX7221 to drive a 6-character 14-segment display (see post).

4

Shift registers would be a very cheap way of doing it... I would lose some control and ease of access. I would have to code in character mapping unless I could find a library somewhere. Though it would reduce the cost significantly.