For this project, I wanted to build a device capable of displaying up to 8 digits on a seven segment display. Sounds easy, right? The catch is, I wanted to retrieve these digits from the Internet over WiFi.

I took this opportunity to try out the ever-popular Arduino platform. Arduino turned out to be a good choice for this project for several because it has:

  • an easy to use, Arduino compatible WiFi adapter (WiShield) put out by asynclabs
  • a library available for talking to the WiShield with examples included
  • a MAX7219 interface library
  • an onboard USB programmer and a software programmer that works on Ubuntu

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