Hello everyone

I've been looking at an led driver that would allow me to interface many LEDs with few uC lines and came across the MAX7219CNG on Jameco. I was trying to follow the data sheet but got lost really fast. I am having issues understanding how it is controlled and how i would be able to manually connect 64 individual LEDs to it. I understand i can write a 8 bit command that would toggle pins D0-D7 on/off, but can't find how to toggle pins SEG A - SEG DP and have an 8x8 matrix of LEDs. I think this would be done by having 8 lines for high and then 8 lines for low, but that doesn't seem very intuitive. It seems to me that for a matrix like that to be built then some LEDs would come out to be in series with each other.

Here is the data sheet of the driver

http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/Products/ProdDS/312160.pdf

Thank you in advance

 

It seems to me that each SEGx provides current for each digit (each digit is made of 8 led) The DIGx pins are the "grounds".

Notice the first paragraph in the very begining: "General Description
The MAX7219/MAX7221 are compact, serial input/out-
put common-cathode display drivers that interface
microprocessors (μPs) to 7-segment numeric LED dis-
plays of up to 8 digits, bar-graph displays, or 64 indi-
vidual LEDs."

You got 8 SEGx, each of them controls 8 led, total of 64 led.