10 LED Bar Graph Display

Simple way to light a bargraph LED display using a micro controller and a couple of logic ICs.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• microcontroller
• baby-o
• digital
• electronics
• diy

[lithium76]

@tomatohodson I bought a kit of wires containing various sizes for breadboarding. I purchased it @ Fry's Electronics. You can find a similar kit @ radioshack

[davidbball13]

i could build this with a 555 with PWM and a 3914 and it would be a hell of a lot simpler

well i could do most of it

[lithium76]

True, but using the 555 for the PWM, you will need to use a POT to change the display. The reason I used the uC is to be able to do more than just light up a graph to a specific level. With the uC it is possible to light up any individual LED in the graph or multiple LEDs at once. It allows me to use it for various purposes with this uC, and it only takes up a couple of pins on the uC.

The 3914s are nice when you have an analog signal and you want to display the level of that signal.

[tomatohodson]

How do you get you're wires so neat and do you reuse them?

[Snapblast]

infinity likes..thanks for sharing..It was easy to follow and very helpful!

[DKJones96]

@robodeath The yellow chip just to the left of the bar graph is a resistor bank.

[Damonnanashi]

@robodeath With the IC chips, sometimes you don't need them. We made a 3914 audio circuit and didn't need any resistors.

[robodeath]

Why are there no resistors?

[produKtNZ]

Lets say i wanted to do something like this. But what i want to do is make a indiv hdd activity display board for a 12port raidcard. Would it be possible?

[jeremyaburns]

you could chain some D-flipflops and connect their clocks. connect the last output to full reset. would be nice to not have a giant IC with outputs all connected to local inputs though that did that....

[martinisbutik]

After seeing this I have a question: Is there a simple 10-stage counter IC, just like the 4017, but where the outputs stay high until the chip resets. So the outputs would be as following: 1 11 111 1111 11111 111111 1111111 11111111 111111111 1111111111 and then repeat Is there a chip that can do this? Or can it only be achieved with a PIC?

[martinisbutik]

multiplexing ftw!