FUTABA VFD PINOUT DRIVER
FUTABA VFD PINOUT MANUAL
FUTABA VFD PINOUT SOFTWARE
FUTABA VFD PINOUT DOWNLOAD

FUTABA VFD PINOUT DRIVER

This was a 'bare' display with no driver chip as yours seems to be.ĭriving the display helps if you consider that it resembles a multi-anode thermionic valve (vacuum tube), actually a multi anode, multi grid directly heated cathode triode, where anode current results in illumination of 1 segment of 1 character. I designed in a 1x16 character VFD display into a product back in the early 1990s. In hope that manufactures start to label (connections of or privide a datasheet (with examples or code) of) non-critical components of their short-life products to be able to reuse instead of throwing away. So for now, I will stop this journey (unless there is a real solution) and leave the information here maybe for future use. I tried a lot of things right now to safe the display will end up the landfill however have some doubts I will find the right solution. So yeah, they made it really hard to be able to reuse some stuff. However, I still don't know if this is the correct protocol to use. The major difference is difference in rising and falling edge. The most interesting I found was a datasheet of PrinceTon technology (PT6314), that looks very similar however different ONLY to the Futaba datasheet (and they provide examples in their datasheet): The all do similar techniques, copy schematics and such. Also found 'Newhaven display' and allot of other similar stuff such as Adafruit. They provide some libraries for AVR and tried most of them. Also in the datasheets there are no examples, just specifications, lack of details 'how to do it' is enormous.Ĭame across this Noritake source and after browse their catalog of products. After register and login there are an impressive ammount of datasheets however no way to search for characteristics.

FUTABA VFD PINOUT SOFTWARE

I have tried to hook a microcontroller (after cover the datalines on the ribbon cable) to the datalines (there are only 3 and not 4, one of them seems to be power +5V – see also updated 'schematic' below) and share ground to try some software that implement similar devices and their protocol.ĭid not find any official Futaba examples, elsewhere or on the outdated looking website of Futaba itself. It can make you quite insecure because you don't know exactly how it must perform exactly. When it isn't working, it could be the used protocol or the connections. Without it is really hard to do because a mistake is easily made. Something like an audio wave player, a TTL 'wave' player. It would be nice that there was a tool to record and playback the (boot-)sequence to be sure that everything is properly connected after changes to configuration are made. Also tried SPI (could be possible because of 4 data lines) however many errors or no result.ĭoes anybody recognize the patterns or protocol used to steer this display? Does anyone know what kind of driver is inside this display?

Tried several standard protocols and I2C gave some result on CH0 and CH1 but that seems a bit weird because of the extra two data channels (some clock or enable sequences).

FUTABA VFD PINOUT DOWNLOAD

You can download the captures in a zip, did several sessions, available in Saleae Logic file format, PulseView and in VCD file format. After reading the pins with analyzer, I see something like this: There are a few microcontrollers on the board and a main processor. The 4 data pins on the Futaba are directly available on the flat cable connector. After figured out the pinouts (see pictures below this question), solder a header and connect an Logic Analyzer to it. The Futaba has no external driver (no chip underneath the display or on the motherboard) so I thought it might be a Chip on Glass (COG) display (because of less pins on the display), I think I am right however they call it Chip IN Glass (CIG).

So I started to analyse the connections of the front-panel/display and figured out that It could be possible to reuse the whole front-panel, inverter is also on the panel.

FUTABA VFD PINOUT MANUAL

I tried to find the service manual of the Samsung unit, tried to find a datasheet of the Futaba display, however no luck. I take apart a Samsung SMT-C7140 HD Unit (made obsolete by cable company, a shame) and found a nice display that I could probably reuse.

Futaba vfd pinout