A TPIC6B595 tester using an Arduino and 1.8" 7 segment display. Sunday afternoon project build.

A quick, simple project I made to test a bag full of second hand TPIC6B595 chips I bought off eBay which were advertised as new. All were obviously used and some had been unsoldered from scrap boards. So, I needed to test them quickly and easily before using them in a project.

I made a simple test circuit that counts from 0-9 on a large 7 segment display to test all outputs work and data isn't getting corrupted. An LED connected to the data out pin via an NPN transistor verifies data to the next chip (if required) is working OK. The TPIC6B595 is inserted into a 20 pin ZIF socket to make it easy to swap them out. The 7 segment display is powered from the V-in pin of the Arduino as each segment has a forward voltage of 6.3V.

I used a 7 segment display rather than a bunch of LED's as it was easier to see if there were any data corruption as the numbers would be incorrect or wrong segments lit if there was. Also I had one left over from my clock project.

Link to my clock project mentioned in the video https://youtu.be/FNXXNWuU0dI

Preview of my upcoming project that will use these chips https://youtu.be/vij3ka8t4q0 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESeoZO0Gk2U