Now and again some very intersting and useful ICs can be found from domestic Chinese manufacturers, and one of these is the TM1638 by Titan Micro. It's a handy part that can drive eight seven-segment LED displays along with eight bicolour LEDs and monitor eight buttons - all with only using the SPI bus. Over the last few years using the TM1638 has been made easy with Arduino, and now this has been repeated for the Pi thanks to the effort of Martin Oldfield.
His examples allow control of the display, including a clock demonstration and also methods for reading the buttons fitted to popular TM1638-based modules. With a little effort you can harness these for fun without too much effort at all, so visit Martin's website to get started. And for more, we're on facebook, twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
However if you need a fuller display for your Raspberry Pi, check out our 128x128 pixel OLED Module. With a diagonal size of 1.5" and 16,384 colours to select from, so almost anything is possible. Furthermore there's a microSD card socket, and removable tabs on each side which can hold LEDs and buttons:
And using the module is made simple - we have tutorials and drivers for both the Arduino and Raspberry Pi platforms - great for experimenters or those who use both systems.
Furthermore, check out the forum where members are already creating modified drivers to rapidly increase the display speed. For more information including our Quickstart guides - and of course to order - visit the OLED Module product page.
