MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

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mnfisher
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MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

Post by mnfisher »

For a project I'm currently working on - I wanted to use a LED display with 32 x 32 LEDs - this uses 16 MAX7219 display drivers in series.

I have some in stock that have a single piece PCB - with 16x8x8 MAX7219 displays attached - I couldn't find any for sale (I got them a few years back) - but the 32 x 8 displays are widely (and cheaply) available - and it effectively 4 of these connected in a square.

I wrote a simple component for this - it has Clear, Refresh, Plot and Write for display purposes, as well as Initialise and SetIntensity.

I tasked gemini with creating a character set for the digits 0..9 and the results were 'poor' - after several iterations, I decided I needed simulation - to make visualising Gemini's efforts quicker.

I eventually tried ChatGPT - and the results were slightly better - though if you try this, I think there is still room for improvement (the 1 is a bit 'thin' and 0 is a bit 'boxy') - if anyone has any artistic skills - there are 16 x 16 pixels per digit to play with :-) (I have no artistic skills - but I think I could have done as well as gemini with a pencil and graph paper - the 6 and 9 caused it a lot of difficulty)

If anyone tries in hardware - be warned that the display can pull quite a lot of current. I used an esp32 with a level shifter and external PSU - but you will need 'thicker than jumper' wires for VCC and GND to the display. CS should be HIGH before power is applied to the display to avoid corruption too.

The current version uses an array of data for the 'character set' (here just '0'..'9') - it could be extended if needed, as using a LUT gave some issues - so uses some RAM at present (not an issue on esp32 of course)

The display can be run in simulation using test_led or in the component source?

Martin
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max7219x16_component.fcfx
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mnfisher
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Re: MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

Post by mnfisher »

PXL_20260210_122731159.MP.jpg
PXL_20260210_122731159.MP.jpg (114.18 KiB) Viewed 2306 times

ChatGPT's effort isn't bad for most digits - I haven't removed the protective film either!

kaqkk007
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Re: MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

Post by kaqkk007 »

Ez a komponens csak esp32 -n fut ? Pic re nem fordítható ?

mnfisher
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Re: MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

Post by mnfisher »

Which device are you trying to use? and what error message(s) do you get?

The only reason I can think of is lack of RAM - it uses a buffer for the full display (8*16 bytes) as well as a buffer to write commands to the display.
Also the character set is in ram here - moving it to a LUT might help?

Martin

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Re: MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

Post by kaqkk007 »

A pic 18f252 ram is kicsi hozzá ? A karakterkészlet lut-ba migrálását hogyan oldhatnám meg ?

mnfisher
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Re: MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

Post by mnfisher »

Looks to have 1536 bytes of RAM..

I'll have a play - it fairly easy to do - add a LUT component and copy the char_set data. It is only used in Write - change this then delete the current data ...

Martin

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Re: MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

Post by kaqkk007 »

Köszönöm kipróbálom .

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Re: MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

Post by kaqkk007 »

Nem lehetne csinálni próbára egy komponens ami nem tartalmazza a karakterek adatait ? Hogy biztosak lehessük abban hogy emiatt nem fordul be hex re ?

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Re: MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

Post by mnfisher »

Yes - just reduce the size to 1 (and delete the data)....

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Re: MAX7219 32x32 LED Display

Post by mnfisher »

I've just tried compiling and seems okay as is? Have you changed the CS pin in properties?

Martin

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