MAX7219 LED Display

The MAX7219 8x8 dot matrix LED display is commonly included in Arduino starter-kit. They can be daisy chained to form a long panel of LED display.

Top: A single MAX7219 8x8 module

Right: 4 modules daisy-chained

To program them with Arduino UNO R3, first we need to add two Libraries: MD_MAX7722 and MD_Parola. There are many other libraries can work with this panel, but these two would be easy to try.

After the libraries are installed, we can open some Examples from the File menu. Below is an example from File --> Examples --> MD_Parola --> Parola_Scrolling to work with Auduino UNO R3.

There are many parameters we can play with in this example. Two key setting must be modified to work in our example.

#define HARDWARE_TYPE MD_MAX72XX::FC16_HW

#define MAX_DEVICES 4

The pins are easy to follow in the next three lines for the CLK, DATA and CS.

Then, after we upload the program to UNO, we can see a scrolling text as "Hello! Enter new message?". The program allows to change the scrolling texts from the Serial Monitor. Note that the baud rate in the program is set at 57600, therefore please change the baud rate in the Serial Monitor or in the program accordingly to work.

Here is a clip showing the result when Send the texts "Welcome to MakerClubQUT".