A Love Note In 14 Segments

14

[Terry] wanted to come up with a little electronics project for his kids, and also came up with something to keep the wife happy. It’s an adorable 14-segment love letter, pieced together with some leftover LED displays and a bit of solder.

There isn’t a microcontroller anywhere to be seen in this project – all the illuminated segments are tied to a switch, and aside from a few resistors there isn’t much to this circuit. The simplicity means it’s a great way for [Terry] to get his kids involved in electronics.

If you’re wondering why [Terry] didn’t throw multiple Arduinos, shift registers, or LED drivers into the build, consider this: sometimes segment displays can be static. The time circuit prop from Back to the Future (but not this modern recreation) was wired up in a similar manner, as only a few specific dates needed to be displayed. Either way, we’re thinking good on [Terry] for introducing his kids to a soldering iron and doing something special for his lady friend.

11 thoughts on “A Love Note In 14 Segments

    1. There’s no shortage of LEDs in the world. And if he’s helped produce a crop of little engineers or scientists, he’s done a very positive thing for the world. For some reason, people aren’t taking underappreciated, disrespected, and badly paid jobs in engineering anymore, preferring lucrative idiot work like advertising and lawyering. I’m not quite sure what the First World economy’s based on anymore, now nobody makes anything.

  1. Hey Everyone,
    I regret to say that I do not even have children and I don’t know where this story came from. This was a simple gift from an embedded systems engineer to his wife. Simple wiring of a permanent message because no further complexity was required.
    Thanks hackadayers :)

  2. if your mad at him you should take a look at the little CPU-speed (turbo)
    indicators on your ancient computers 386? 486? pentium1?

    those were jumpered for the display of two different speeds and only
    contained leds resistors jumpers and three wires; 5v,gnd,turbo

    PS: thanks HAD for reminding me i have some somewhere…
    buried in a pile of other simillar shit.
    i think i just might use em, maybe even statically like this guy ;)

    hey, if it werent for such static useages i might not have the extras
    hiddin somewhere… courtesy of outdated computers!

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