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“One of the things I love working with the Arduino is LED monitors. It does not matter if they are with 7 segments or array of points and I’ve done many different designs using them. They are very interesting because there is a kind of “magic” in how they work. What you see on monitors are optical illusions, only possible due to Persistence of Vision (POV)! But the screens have a lot of pins to connect to the Arduino (or other microcontroller) and the best solution is to apply the techniques of data multiplexing to minimize the use of their ports. With this solution, each segment of LEDs will only be activated for a few moments (milliseconds), but this repetition in so many times per second (high frequency) creates the illusion of a complete image. This is the same effect of the video screen you are using now to read this page. Personally, the most interesting thing to do is to develop the logic, the code to display the correct information according to your hardware. A single prototype using displays of LED requires a lot of time to mount all the components on one board and includes many wire connections.”

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