Design and Construction of a Microcontroller Based Electronic Moving Message Display

LED-based moving-message displays are becoming appreciated among the general public for transmitting information to groups of people quickly.This work presents a simple design and implementation of a microcontroller-based electronic moving message display system.The design involves the arrangement of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and the programming of a microcontroller that controls and determines the pattern and session of the display.The implementation of a moving message displays a text containing 22 characters (i.e.WELCOME TO DEPT.OF PHYSICS).The electronic message display helps to pass information, educates, enlightens, facilitates commercial activities through the advertisement and marketing of goods and services, description of places, etc.The ease in which it displays information makes it a veritable, suitable, and excellent tool for passing information fast and pleasurable to the public.Furthermore, it enhances the response to information in an attractive way and manner in which it displays messages.The microcontroller used in this work is the PIC16F84A.It belongs to a class of 8-bit microcontrollers of RISC (reduced instructions set) architecture.Its output controls the switching of the relays through a transistor switching stage that switches its socket.The LED matrix (array) is arranged in parallel and soldered to a Vero board with the microcontroller and other electronic components, such as resistors, capacitors, transistors, relays, LEDs, diodes, and transformers.In view, this work served as a means of digging into the technology involved in the use of a microcontroller and some other basic electronic components and enhanced visualization of message display.