I started by the 74HC595 and one Segment Display tutorial then I wanted to upgrade to a 4 digit seven segment display but I was a bit disappointed because firstly the Elegoo project doesn't reuse the 74HC595 and secondly it just repeat the same digit. So I decided to modify the project.
The 4 digit seven segment model used in this project is the 5634A which means that we must put the common cathode of each digit to Low to allow its segments light up by the 74HC595.
I faced to 2 issues the first one was to find out how to be able to control a digit independently since all digits have a common cathode which I finally understood that it's all about illusion by displaying quickly digit by digit at the time so that the human eye won't notice that in fact only one digit is on at the time.
The second issue was to find out the good timing to avoid the blinking and a residue of light on segments that are not lighted up.
For the purpose of the project we are going to use a LDR mounted in a voltage divider with a 10 k resistance to read its value from the analog input of Arduino and then display it (refer to the photocell tutorial for more detail).
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