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Representing Letters on a Seven-Segment Display
< seven-segment display
Revision as of 22:01, 10 November 2015 by Inject (talk | contribs)

Error
A common method of indicating an error.

Representing Letters on a Seven-Segment Display, while highly discouraged, have been done mostly in low-end products such as cheap portable media players and many hobby projects. In such places, 7-segment displays were extended to support letters. Those representations varies from implementation to implementation and are not standardized by any standards organization.

Note that some letters such as K (K), M (M), V (V), W (W), X (X), and Z (Z) are completely unrecognizable by most people and as such been left out of the table below.

Digit 7-Segments abcdefg gfedcba Display Reference
a b c d e f g
A 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0x77 0x77 A 7 segment display labeled.svg
b 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0x1F 0x7C b
C 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0x4E 0x39 C
c 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0x0D 0x58 c
d 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0x3D 0x5E d
E 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0x4F 0x79 E
F 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0x47 0x71 F
G 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0x5E 0x3D G
H 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0x37 0x76 H
h 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0x17 0x74 h
I 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0x06 0x30 I
J 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0x3C 0x1E J*
L 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0x0E 0x38 L
n 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0x15 0x54 n
o 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0x1D 0x5C o
P 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0x67 0x73 P
q 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0x73 0x67 q
r 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0x05 0x50 r
S 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0x5B 0x6D S
t 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0x0F 0x78 t
U 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0x3E 0x3E U
u 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0x1C 0x1C u
y 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0x3B 0x6E y

Lookup table

One can decode letters to pins via a simple lookup table.

const unsigned char seven_seg_digits_decode_abcdefg[75]= {
/*  0     1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9     :     ;     */
    0x7E, 0x30, 0x6D, 0x79, 0x33, 0x5B, 0x5F, 0x70, 0x7F, 0x7B, 0x00, 0x00, 
/*  <     =     >     ?     @     A     B     C     D     E     F     G     */
    0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x77, 0x00, 0x4E, 0x00, 0x4F, 0x47, 0x5E, 
/*  H     I     J     K     L     M     N     O     P     Q     R     S     */
    0x37, 0x06, 0x3C, 0x00, 0x0E, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x67, 0x00, 0x00, 0x5B, 
/*  T     U     V     W     X     Y     Z     [     \     ]     ^     _     */
    0x00, 0x3E, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 
/*  `     a     b     c     d     e     f     g     h     i     j     k     */
    0x00, 0x00, 0x1F, 0x0D, 0x3D, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x17, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 
/*  l     m     n     o     p     q     r     s     t     u     v     w     */
    0x00, 0x00, 0x15, 0x1D, 0x00, 0x73, 0x05, 0x00, 0x0F, 0x1C, 0x00, 0x00, 
/*  x     y     z     */
    0x00, 0x3B, 0x00
};
const unsigned char seven_seg_digits_decode_gfedcba[75]= {
/*  0     1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9     :     ;     */
    0x3F, 0x06, 0x5B, 0x4F, 0x66, 0x6D, 0x7D, 0x07, 0x7F, 0x6F, 0x00, 0x00, 
/*  <     =     >     ?     @     A     B     C     D     E     F     G     */
    0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x77, 0x00, 0x39, 0x00, 0x79, 0x71, 0x3D, 
/*  H     I     J     K     L     M     N     O     P     Q     R     S     */
    0x76, 0x30, 0x1E, 0x00, 0x38, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x73, 0x00, 0x00, 0x6D, 
/*  T     U     V     W     X     Y     Z     [     \     ]     ^     _     */
    0x00, 0x3E, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 
/*  `     a     b     c     d     e     f     g     h     i     j     k     */
    0x00, 0x00, 0x7C, 0x58, 0x5E, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x74, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 
/*  l     m     n     o     p     q     r     s     t     u     v     w     */
    0x00, 0x00, 0x54, 0x5C, 0x00, 0x67, 0x50, 0x00, 0x78, 0x1C, 0x00, 0x00, 
/*  x     y     z     */
    0x00, 0x6E, 0x00
};

/* Invalid letters are mapped to all segments off (0x00). */
unsigned char decode_7seg(unsigned char chr)
{ /* assuming implementation uses ASCII */
    if (chr > (unsigned char)'z')
        return 0x00;
    return seven_seg_digits_decode_abcdefg[chr - '0'];
    /* or  seven_seg_digits_decode_gfedcba */
}