Introduction: YouTube Subscriber Counter on ESP8266 and MAX7219

By My YouTube channel
About: Just do things, electronics, woodwork, etc.

Hello! This is project How-ToDo, today i'll show you how I made this wooden subscribers counter. Some time ago I saw a couple similar projects in different variations, with different displays in interesting bodies but I didn't have a point to make one because to be honest it's useless thing. Recently I received a few Node MCU modules and trying to figure it out what to do with it I remembered of subscriber counter. So I decided to make a very simple wooden design with only display and micro USB for power.

Step 1: Сomponents

For display I choose this 8 digits seven segments LED (Ali ) module, as you can see I'm very optimistic about this channel. This designed for 5v dc but works fine with 3.3v from my Node MCU ESP-12E module (Ali ), maybe i was lucky and in your case it's not gonna work so you have to put 5v step up dc dc converter keep it in mind. For the body I choose a walnut because it is solid nice looking wood, also pretty cheap.

Step 2: Woodworking

When I started to thinking how to place all components, I realized that display will fit in my 3" lumber if i cut the ages of it and make a very tiny walls. I cut two rectangle pieces 35 by 75mm, drew a contour of display, cut rough window and Finished with file and dremel. On the second peace I cut some space for Node MCU and micro USB for power. Then cover wood with danish oil to protect the surface.

Step 3: Electronics

Now we can do electronic stuff. Cut off all pins because they are way too big, and solder wires to the indicator.
VCC - VCC,
GND - GND
D1 - DIN,
D2 - CLK
D3 - CS

Step 4: Firmware

Time to upload the firmware, basically it's composed of two examples of code for indicator ( DigitaLedDisplay ) and YouTube API libraries, you need to download both libraries in Arduino IDE, and firmware itself also you need to write your wi-fi name, password, google API key and YouTube channel ID, were to find last two, and how to connect node mcu to PC you can find in google, that was explained hundreds times and the way better then I can do.

Step 5: Final

After everything start working the only thing left to do is glue electronic parts inside the wood body. After glue is dry we get nice wooden decoration for table. That is all I get for today, I hope you like this, share, subscribe and see you soon!

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