I'm a newbie in these kind of electronics..i mean uControllers, I don't even know how am iI supposed to build the uController part of the circuit.What uC should i use? Can I get it to work through pc serial or parallel port?
I dont even know what are those pins...SCLK MOSI MISO LOAD and ENABLE.
Please help me out!

Thanks!

 

I would be willing to bet that Googling "max6979" will produce 279 hits. One will be for this thread, and several others will lead you to a datasheet.

Get the datasheet, read it carefully, and you will understand how to drive LED's using this IC. You may also see what you need in the way of a uC.

 

The pins in the rectangular box are used to connect the chip with the PC and program it. As beenthere said, read the datasheet and you will find out

 

SCLK MOSI MISO..... These are SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface). Google SPI to understand this very simple protocol.

The uP coummincates with the chip through this interface. You need to
(1) know how to send data out of the SPI of your uP (read the uP datasheet)
(2) know what data is needed to be transfered to your MAX chip (read the MAX datasheet)

 

There are two broad answers to your question.
1. Select a uC that has a built in SPI hardware peripheral. Then turning LEDS on and off is a simple matter of writing words to a register in the corrrect sequence
2. If you don't want to use one with built in hardware, then you can use four general purpose IO pins on any uC and make them beat up and down in the correct sequence to read and write registers in the MAX6969 or is it MAX6979?

How did you think it was going to happen?

 

Today I built something with MAX7219, I remembered posting this thread..five years ago, I thought I'll look it up, and see the responses I got. Many thanks, you guys.
Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but hey, it's mine, right? Long story short:
I'd like to say hello, and will try to help out others with the stuff I learned.

pityu

 

Today I built something with MAX7219, I remembered posting this thread..five years ago, I thought I'll look it up, and see the responses I got. Many thanks, you guys.
Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but hey, it's mine, right? Long story short:
I'd like to say hello, and will try to help out others with the stuff I learned.

pityu

It took time, but nobody could blame you of not being consequent with yourself!

That chip is good for many many things. I used it more than 15 years ago and still recall that some binary codes do not "progress" in a straightforward way in the table listing them. Don't get trapped by that.

Just by reading carefully the datsheet you could find which ones I am talkign about.

/edit to add:

Could you say something about what you did / learnt?

/edit

 

Hi,

and sorry for the late reply. I didn't check the notify me thing on the list. I kinda forgot about this whole thing (edit: to use the MAX7219, i mean) for a couple of years, during the time i was in college.
Well, i made a simple display for myself, it will be built into a cable guide in my little office. I planned to use it for quite a few things, as a power supply display (both amps and volts), as a RPM display for my CNC mill, and to show me the time until the CNC milling is finished, maybe even to display the tool to which i have to change.
What i learnt is actually the spi part of this, and now, that i've read your post, the irregularity of the counting. I was planning to make macros for the numbers and digits anyway! Thanks for the heads-up!

I will post photos when i finally get to put it into its place.

Thanks again!

pityu