saving you costs: 4-digit LED display drive using 16f54

[tetsu-jp]

Over the past 5 years I have seen many different ways to drive LED displays.
And I tried some designs myself.

One solution is to use a small microcontroller only for the display,
and clock in data serially!

The 16f54 as TSSOP is a very small IC. And it costs less than the display itself.
No extra parts are needed indeed except for the clock signal generation.
I use a coil here while also a resonator or crystal could be used.

So extra parts count is just one part, plus one resistor but that is not strictly needed.

I share the source code so you can advance too!

However:

1. No ownership or copyright is transfered.
2. The code to read external serial data is not implemented.
You would have to add it yourself.
3. Since it's a small controller with 512 words FLASH, assembly language is used.

Many electronics gadgets these days have a short live cycle just a few years.
After that they end up as e-waste.
There is no need to bury parts which are not absolutely needed.
There is no need to use technology from 10 or 20 years ago.
It's perfectly possible to use SMD "at home".

By the way you could copy and paste the source directly from the PDF for instance using foxit reader.