Category Archives: bargraph

Custom Circuit Makes for Better Battery Level Display

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Isn’t it always the way? There’s a circuit right out of the textbooks, or even a chip designed to do exactly what you want — almost exactly. It’s 80% perfect for your application, and rather than accept that 20%, you decide to start from scratch and design your own solution.

That’s the position [Great Scott!] found himself in with this custom LED battery level indicator. As the video below unfolds we learn that he didn’t start exactly from scratch, though. His first pass was the entirely sensible use of the LM3914 10-LED bar graph driver chip, a device that’s been …read more

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3D Printing Custom LED Bar Graphs

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[BikerGlen] wanted to spice up his zombie containment unit (see video below) so he designed and 3D printed some very cool looking bar graphs. Apparently, you can get curved bar graph LEDs, but only if you buy a fairly large quantity. Hand soldering discrete LEDs at the perfect angle would be frustrating, but with a 3D printed jig, it was a piece of cake.

The devices use a MAX6954 LED driver, so it needs very few parts and takes commands via SPI. The chips were not cheap, but the small size and high integration sold [Glen] on it.

The rest …read more

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