Category: 9. Counters

7-segment Displays can be used together to display digits from 0 to 9 as well as a few characters for use in acounting circuit or interfaced to a microcontroller. Nowadays it is very easy to display numbers and letters across multiple LED displays using micro-controllers, such as the Arduino or Raspberry-Pi, along with a small…

MOD Counters are cascaded counter circuits which count to a set modulus value before resetting. The job of a counter is to count by advancing the contents of the counter by one count with each clock pulse. Counters which advance their sequence of numbers or states when activated by a clock input are said to…

A BCD counter is a special type of a digital counter which can count to ten on the application of a clock signal. We saw previously that toggle T-type flip flops can be used as individual divide-by-two counters. If we connect together several toggle flip-flops in a series chain we can produce a digital BCD counter…

Bidirectional counters are capable of counting in either the up direction or the down direction through any given count sequence. A bidirectional counter is a synchronous up/down binary counter that has the ability to count in both directions either to or from some preset value as well as zero. As well as counting “up” from…

Synchronous Counters are so called because the clock input of all the individual flip-flops within the counter are all clocked together at the same time by the same clock signal. Unlike asynchronous counters whose output of one stage is connected directly to the clock input of the next counter stage in the chain. The synchronous counter has…

Asynchronous Counters use flip-flops which are serially connected together so that the input clock pulse appears to ripple through the counter. An Asynchronous counter can have 2n-1 possible counting states e.g. MOD-16 for a 4-bit counter, (0-15) making it ideal for use in Frequency Division applications. But it is also possible to use the basic asynchronous counter…

Frequency Division uses divide-by-2 toggle flip-flops as binary counters to reduce the frequency of the input clock signal. In the Sequential Logic tutorials we saw how D-type Flip-Flop´s work and how they can be connected together to form a Data Latch. Another useful feature of the D-type Flip-Flop is as a binary divider, for Frequency Division or…