7 Segment LED with Hexadecimal counter MOC

[TechnicBrickPower]

Hi everyone,

I have made a 7 segment LED panel that can count upwards or downwards using a track driven program via tow ball pins. The LED display can be programmed to show digits or one of 17 different letters to make a sequential display to animate small text messages. The panel is driven either by hand using a crank or via a Powered Up motor. You can select which one to use via a manual switch. I have made a track to display hexadecimal counting from 0 to F.

 

 

[Davidz90]

Nice, compact mechansim (at least as compact as chain encoding allows).

It's amazing how many things can be done with pins on chains, from all sorts of counters to music boxes.

[Nazgarot]

This is really cool! Great engineering!

Would bee cool if you inverted the "programing chain" 90 degrees so that you could link multiple panels to display streaming codes.

_ED_

[lcvisser]

Very cool, I will study this in detail! I think @aeh5040made something similar once. Maybe others also.

@Milan can builds like this be featured instead of yet another truck? This is LEGO Technic at its best.  (Nothing against trucks, but the recent features feel a bit repetitive and arbitrarily focused…)

[SNIPE]

Cool display, I wonder how such a model would have a carry mechanism if it was more than one digit. Maybe just extend the tracks inbetween the 0 and F digits to that it engages the next column but only once every 16 steps because otherwise it would move the next digit every cycle which is 00 11 22 33 44... instead of 01 02 03 04...

[m00se]

Amazing work! I guess a nice extra design challenge would be to change the "programming" in such a way that you could directly "code" the segments that need to be lit up instead of coding which ones need to change.

[aeh5040]

Congratulations!  I did indeed make one of these over 10 years ago.  I like how compact and robust yours is.

The next challenge, which I still have to get around to addressing, is to make a fully mechanical multi-segment counter or clock along the same lines.  The main difficulty of course is making a carry mechanism that is able to supply enough torque to operate the display.  I think each digit would need its own access to the power source, which would somehow get triggered when a carry is needed.  Still trying to find the perfect mechanism for that!

 

[Jurss]

Great build, but most of all I enjoyed explanatory part in video.