today I'm gonna be trying to get this
beautiful VFD display up and running on
an Arduino for this big secret project
that I'm working on this came out of a
much larger piece of vintage equipment
and I'm actually replacing the main
board in that with an Arduino so that I
can get it to do what I want it's
involved a ton of reverse engineering
work but we're almost done and this is
one of the last steps is to get this
working I'm actually really excited
about this this this thing is just
gorgeous
they were super popular in the late
1980s they made over a hundred million a
year at the at the peak of production
and they were in everything from
microwaves to VCRs to calculators this
is a particularly nice one from ISC
Electronics Corporation in Japan which
is now Noritake I originally thought
that you bought just the glass part and
that this was a custom board and I was
gonna have to figure out you know what
the heck this custom board was but it
turns out this thing is sold or was sold
as one entire module from North taki /
ISE and and I actually was able to find
the datasheet for it so it's it's twenty
characters wide two lines tall and it
can display more than just ask you you
can display Japanese characters and a
whole bunch of extended extended
character sets it's it's really gorgeous
the the glass construction is amazing
and then and then the circuit board is
just just pretty stunning it's you know
it's just like super crisp yellow silk
screen and the traces are just really
nice I don't know there it's just really
well-made I searched for this particular
model online and it turns out these are
pretty hard to get I only found one site
that the selling them and they're
selling for over six hundred dollars I
think it's because this particular model
was only sold to OEMs equipment
manufacturers and not sold retail so
there just aren't that many of this
particular model but other models are in
like 50 to 100 bucks I don't think it
was that expensive originally regardless
I really don't want to drop this or
break it anyway electrically but let's
try and get it up and running I really
want to be able to put my own characters
on here now that the first step in that
is to find a datasheet and I did some
googling I was able to find a datasheet
but it's
just a single page so let's look at this
together so it's got a five full supply
it says it displays ASCII katakana and
extended character fonts two lines by
twenty characters tall it says that it
can do either high speed parallel or
serial so the Arduino that I have I have
an Arduino do way that I want to run
this on and this is actually a 3.3 volt
or can we know but it does have a 5 volt
power supply on it so what I want to do
is see this the the logic pins on this
will spit out a maximum of 3.3 volts and
the logic high on this is only 2 so so
as long as it's more than 2 volts this
will see it as a logical high which will
allow us to drive it with this 3.3 volt
archangels the last thing that's really
important right now
is the pin out so this thing has this
connector here and it doesn't it's not
really labeled what these pins are but
the datasheet has it so it has so 1
through 8 or d0 through d7 which are
presumably that the parallel port or the
parallel connection data pins and that
has WR and CS which I don't really know
what those are then has Sen slash test I
think is serial in and then 12 is busy
which maybe it flips when it says hey
I'm busy don't send me anything more and
then to ground pins and to 5 volt power
supply pins so I think the next step is
to take that set of pins and wire up a
board that allows me to connect this
from this connector here two pins on the
Arduino and then write some software
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all right there we go there is the board
I I added a separate set of female
hitters here so I can plug other stuff
into the Arduino this this Arduino has
two sets of pins sort of hanging off the
back end similar to the mega and then I
added one bodge wire here because I
realized if I want to use this serial
that the serial capabilities of this
screen if I end up needing that then I
got to plug it into one of the serial
connections but just it off to the side
here so so that's what's going on there
it looks a little messy but uh but you
know it's more or less just connecting
every pin straight through so taking
every pin on here that is not power or
ground and connecting those to a data
pin and then powering ground obviously
and then I actually added another
connector here um that is for other set
of displays on this which are just seven
segment displays running on Macs
seven to one nine which is a really
common seven segment driver chip so I
gotta get that up and running as well
but I thought that was a little less
interesting than this very cool piece of
history here that's all that's left now
is to write some software I'm actually
going to take all this back to the
Airbnb that I'm staying at since I don't
need the soldering iron or any of the
other equipment in the shop and and work
on this tomorrow morning
so I wanted to take a moment and have a
bit of a heart-to-heart chat with you as
I mentioned in my last video I've been
working really hard on this big secret
project for like the past couple months
since like July and if you follow me on
Twitter you know it's been a huge roller
coaster we're super close to finishing
it but it's taking way longer than I
ever expected and I've broken a lot of
really expensive parts honestly I would
have given up if I didn't have an
awesome sponsor that's made it possible
to buy all of the replacement parts that
I need and that sponsor is audible
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slash trained parts or text range parts
- 500 500 now let's get that screen
working I had to get a haircut I
couldn't take it anymore
hence it's the change let's write some
software it and get this thing working
now I don't have a lot to go on other
than just that one page and datasheet I
think it's enough I've never done any
parallel port work before I would
probably get this up and running with
cereal but I thought no that's why why
do the easy thing let's try a more
challenging one
you never know what you'll learn the
first step is just to make sure that the
Arduino is working I've learned that the
hard way
the way I like to do that is just by
loading up the blink sketch that that
blinks the built-in LED so right now
that LED is solid it's the orange LED
and it blinks no problem
we know that everything's working
between the computer and the Arduino
good to go now the question is how do we
get the parallel port working so let's
see let's load up a new sketch here you
remember what pins I'll get it's all
connected to one yeah I wired this
upside down and backwards the green wire
here is actually pin one but I've wired
it to the second pin in and then I wired
pin two to the first pin well that's not
really worth fixing but it's gonna
direct me crazy so in 50 is 1 and 52 is
2 this is boring cool so this just sits
on top these pins so on the datasheet
we've got WR and CES and I did some
googling and CS is chip select and WR I
think it's like right ready so the way
letters are encoded in this and in most
systems is via ASCII this looks like an
ASCII table here and basically this is
telling us it's it's a little bit tricky
but it's telling us in hex which is you
know base 16 numbers the values of each
of these characters and what they look
like and and the the left-hand side but
the rows or the first are the least
significant digit and that and the
columns are the are the most significant
digit so you know like 41 is capital a
which is equivalent in ASCII so I think
this is a skewing pretty close to asking
so we need to send that number like 41
hex 41 we need to set that in binary on
the eight pins
and then we need to drop WR NCS which
are normally high folded high when I
dropped those love and it should read it
let's write a function that is send
character now we need a character
descend
let's create a pin mapping care so pins
are least significant I think pin 814 so
we now have an array that we can look up
the pins in the in the data that we're
sending we can look up by Panasonic it
and a technical we are going to write
for loop and we're gonna step across the
bits in the character we're gonna send
so bit that I want to send it's gonna
see ANDed with one we're only looking at
the least significant digit which is of
value one now we need to before we do
that though we need to shift it by the
digit that we're on so we're always
shifting it over and chopping last one
off so shift that by alright if this
doesn't make name since you I'm sorry
just know that that we're setting each
of the pins to be a binary number we're
gonna set the CS w our pins to be low
and then we have to wait a little while
and I don't know how long that needs to
be let's be really generous and about
100 milliseconds now lastly let's have
it spit out some A's
so we'll have it spit out send character
a capital A
delay for 500 okay here we go
Yuri huh well that doesn't really show
anything so I was hoping I was just
gonna work I guess let's do some
debugging and make sure we're sending
the right stuff do anything if you're
curious this is what being my
professional software engineers like
particularly one that works on hardware
which I've never really done much of
professionally other than YouTube but uh
yeah it's a lot of a lot of sitting
around and going huh I wonder why it's
not doing anything at all no idea this
is gonna do any good but nothing hope
this was gonna be simple
hahahaha
all my numbers are wrong that's what's
going on all of my pins are wrong I was
reading the other side okay yeah we know
has two sets of pins on the end here and
I was reading this side but they're
actually plugged into this side oops
this good work yes it does check this
out
the Y with the boom lot on it is
actually the last character I I did that
for debugging that's zero x FF we're
gonna remove that and now we should be
able to print a whole bunch of eggs out
here there we go what to do now I can
only send a single character of time and
I would like to go a little write a full
string to it so let's wipe ourselves a
print statement instead of saying send
character now we're gonna say print
hello world
it's a traditional thing to print when
you first get something working shot hey
that worked really well better than I
thought let's add a new line just so it
doesn't look ridiculous like
now but uh I think we're pretty good oh
that's looking better yeah that's
exactly what I want I think I mean I
think we're pretty much there uh what
else do we print like a little animation
how about that um I found these little
little characters little little like
fancy
drawing characters little boxes and
they're varying widths and so I thought
maybe we could do a cool animation with
those and that coded up here that's not
quite what I had in mind but it's cool
let's uh a little fillet all right okay
so this is what I've been trying to do
that's the idea
I want to speed it up and remove my
delay is oh that's pretty trippy I think
it could could use with being slowed
down a little bit I mean the top line
looks cool it's kind of what I was going
for I mean I think we got it working uh
that that actually was not too bad in
the end there you go BFD display so this
goes in as I alluded to a much larger
project that I thought was gonna be over
a long time ago but it's almost there
we have been breaking tons of equipment
there's a lot of story involved but
anyway it's gonna be a pretty awesome
video coming up hopefully that video
will be out in the next couple weeks
here I'll see you again soon
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