CH30-F - 7 Segment Intensity Functions

We'll connect the 7 Segment Display with a Crazy Circuits Ribbon Cable using all four wires.

Start by plugging the connector with the three wires in it (Black, Red, Yellow) into the Pin 1 row of the Bit Board. (Make sure the Black wire is in - and the Yellow wire labeled S1 is closest to the number 1 on the Bit Board.)

We can then plug the Orange wire labeled S2 into Pin 0 on the Bit Board.

Now we'll connect the other end of the Ribbon Cable to the 7 Segment Display.

The pin labels are on the back of the 7 Segment Display PCB. From top to bottom it's CLK, DIO, VCC, GND.

CLK stands for Clock and DIO stands for Data Input/Output. VCC is the Positive (+) and GND is the Ground (-) or Negative.

S2 (Orange) goes to CLK, S1 (Yellow) goes to DIO, and then + (Positive) goes to VCC and - (Ground or Negative) goes to GND.

Make sure every wire is connected in the correct place, or our display will not work!

We used a 3D printed holder we designed to hold the 7 Segment Display in place on the LEGO baseplate.

You can find the guide for the holder here: 7 Segment Display Holder

Alternately you can use some LEGO bricks and a rubber band or tape to hold the display in place.

If you've never used a micro:bit before you'll want to check out this guide: Bit Board V2 Setup and Use

We're going to load the following code for our 7 Segment Intensity Functions program: https://makecode.microbit.org/_axc3xL6TP...

In the on start block we'll set up our display using the pins we've connected. CLK to Pin 0 and DIO to Pin 1.

For this example we've added two functions, fadeUp and fadeDown which will do what they suggest. One will fade up the brightness/intensity of the display while the other will fade it down.

We can call the function and pass in the parameter to see it fade up or down.

Note that while the intensity can go from 0 to 7 (8 levels) the 0 is still not the same as blank or "completely off" and it's really just the dimmest brightness setting.

Because of that we've added the clear statement at the end of the fadeDown function.

Once the code is loaded it should start running immediately.

You can power the micro:bit via the USB cable you used to load the code or you can use a battery pack plugged into the Bit Board.

The display will start blank and then slowly fade up the numbers 1234. It will then slowly fade down the numbers 1234.

Next the display will fade up the number 7 (technically 0007) until it reaches full brightness, and then blank the display and repeat the process.

Follow along with our recorded Live Stream!

(We'll add the video to this step after we do the stream!)