Arduino 8 Digit 7 Segment LED Display Buying Guide

Abhishek Ghosh

By Abhishek Ghosh July 12, 2017 12:28 am Updated on July 12, 2017

Arduino 8 Digit 7 Segment LED Display Buying Guide

Unlike TM1637 4 digit 7 Segment LED Display, buying 8 digit 7 segment LED display is not so easy to take decision. These Are Driven By MAX7219/MAX7221 driver which supports LED dot matrix too. 8 digit is maximum number the driver supports. It is towards pure electronics, you can separately buy the basic electronic components and build on breadboard. Arduino has direct official support of the driver. TM1637 is manufactured by few Chinese companies (like Catalex) and all builds good quality. 8 digit can be locally assembled on PCB. You need to know who manufactured for better quality product. Secondly, you’ll not get so much guides unlike TM1637. As average cost is very less, you can buy one module but basically buying single 7 segment LED to learn is more practical approach. Also there are 11, 14, 16 segment LED display and 5×7 LED dot matrix. As driver is commonly MAX7219/MAX7221, 5×7 LED dot matrix more preferred for printing real looking charters. 5×7 LED dot matrix are usually bigger, 16 segment LED display is smaller. 5×7 LED dot matrix is easily available and cheap, 16 segment LED display is difficult to buy and costly. Coding will remain near same.

If you want TM1637 4 digit 7 segment LED display like lot of examples, guides then 5×7 LED dot matrix is better option in our opinion. Also, unlike TM1637 4 digit 7 segment LED display, the unit is 4×2, on one housing but 2 housings. To display 12345678, 1234 will have slight gap with 5678.

MAX7219 Dot Matrix Module 4 in one display commonly used as examples with Arduino and you can see example videos on YouTube. Basically after 4 digits, LCD display and color LCD TFT more common in usage.