We all hate progress bars! They are always delaying us from doing something. But in the Arduino world they can be very handy. Here, we will see how to build one with LEDs. An LED bar graph is just a bunch of LEDs put together in a fancy case, but there are many uses for it. We can display the date from a sensor, show a critical condition, or make a funny light show with it.
We will need the following ingredients to execute this recipe:
An Arduino board connected to the computer via USB
A breadboard and jumper wires
An LED bar graph
Resistors between 220–1,000 ohm
Following are the steps to connect a 10-segment bar graph to the Arduino:
Mount the LED bar graph onto the breadboard.
If the bar graph is a common anode (+) configuration, connect the common anode (+) pin to the 5V port on the Arduino. If the bar graph is a common cathode (-), connect the pin to the GND port on the Arduino.
Connect each individual segment pin to one individual Arduino digital pin...