I'm interested in building an LED digital thermometer with 3 or 4 large 4"/100mm 7-segment LED display digits (for example, Kingbright SA40-19EWA). There are plenty of kits available which come with smaller LEDs (e.g Conrad, Canakit). My question is, what's the likelihood of success attempting to use any of these kits to drive larger LEDs instead of the ones they're supplied with/designed to work with? And if it seems infeasible, would I be better off starting off from an Arduino-based thermometer design instead? (Although my initial reaction is that an Arduino would be overkill.) Any other pointers/advice welcome.
The main issue to overcome would seem to be that the large LEDs typically need 7-8V, while 2V is more typical for smaller ones (but maybe some kits are amenable to suitable modification by, say, changing a few resistor values). Of course there's also other things to worry about such as common cathode/common anode and the mechanics of replacing the original PCB-mounted displays with wires to the bigger digit components which might influence choice.
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