Qwiic Alphanumeric Display - Pink

This product went red! You can keep ordering it as normal from SparkFun.

We are quite familiar with seven-segment displays. We see them on our alarm clocks, ovens, and microwaves. But what happens if you add more segments to each digit? All of a sudden you can display more than just numbers! Introducing the brand new Alphanumeric Display from your friends at SparkX. These fourteen-segment digits allow you display all sorts of numbers, characters, and symbols.

The SparkFun Alphanumeric Display Arduino library makes printing strings to the display as easy as calling the print() function. Use the library to send I2C commands to the HT16K33 LED driver chip to light up segments (including the decimal point or colon) and even scroll your string across the display. You can download the library through the Arduino library manager by searching 'SparkFun Alphanumeric Display' or you can get the GitHub repo as a .zip file and install the library from there.

The HT16K33 also supports I2C address configuration. Simply close a combination of the address jumpers on the back and you can communicate with up to four displays on the same bus. Our slim board design also features detachable stand off holes, vertical Qwiic connectors, and internal mounting holes.

This board is one of our many Qwiic compatible boards! Simply plug and go. No soldering, no figuring out which is SDA or SCL, and no voltage regulation or translation required!

We do not plan to regularly produce SparkX products so get them while they’re hot!

Experimental Product: SparkX products are rapidly produced to bring you the most cutting edge technology as it becomes available. These products are tested but come with no guarantees. Live technical support is not available for SparkX products. Head on over to our forum for support or to ask a question.

Comments

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  • BradLevy / about 5 years ago / 2

    You should add the display size to the description. As near as I can tell from the .brd file (I don't have Eagle), the LED housing is 40x16mm, and the LED digit height is just under 1/2 inch.

  • Member #134773 / about 4 years ago / 1

    I'd like to see the datasheet for the LEDs available, or at the very least a drawing showing the "naming" of the segments. (The part number for the LEDs would be nice as well, though since a cursory look at digikey.com found only "obsolete" parts, none of which matched this display, I have the feeling that you probably got them direct from a manufacturer.)

    BTW, this comment also applies to the purple, blue, and red versions.

    • Member #134773 / about 4 years ago / 1

      It finally dawned on me that there's a number printed on the side of the LED array, "JMF-4473BZ3-59P6" followed by what's likely a date code ("8 2015"). A Google search turned up nothing for this part.

      • Member #134773 / about 4 years ago / 1

        Finally, some success on this quest: The datasheets for the LED array are on the Github repository for the hardware. For the pink one, the datasheet is here.

  • Member #186828 / about 5 years ago / 1

    Anybody have experience on how dim this can be? I'd like to use for an alarm clock project but with other displays couldn't get it dim enough at night to not be annoying.

    • santaimpersonator / about 5 years ago / 1

      Based on the information in the datasheet, the IC uses a PWM to dim the "elements".

    • Member #14799 / about 5 years ago / 1

      No experience on this display, but there is a dimming command 'dimming set'.

Customer Reviews

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1 of 1 found this helpful:

Nice!

The many examples are clear and easy to follow. Running in a few minutes. Is pink enough and bright enough! Cool!

This is a beautiful - really beautiful - display.

I love the look of it. I was able to run it successfully on 3v logic on an adafruit feather m0 with circuitpython. FWIW the adafruit 7-segment displays don't have a colon or a 3rd place decimal point so I had to reverse engineer where the digits were to be able to use the adafruit libraries.

This is a really nice looking display. Absolutely love the pink.