vfd

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dvlee
 
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Joined: Tue May 15, 2012 10:45 am

vfd

Post by dvlee »

05-tue15-12
Hi,
I have been for the longest while (almost 2 months now) been given a project to get a vacuum fluorescent display to work.(noritake itron CW20045-UW5A url:http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 5IwsOqXZiw)
I was originally given a PIC18F458 dev board CP-PIC V3 to work with and had many problems from code compilation with MPLAB 84.V8, to downloading with the EPICWIN and when i finally got the program on the chip and the connections made 7 data lines, 3control lines and vcc and ground.....nothing. I've been on at least 10 different forums and still have not succeeded. I am not very good at programming and am learning.Took a class in the atmega32p and have an arduino uno board, which I have now turned to in the hope of getting this thing to work. I am using the examples given in the mazidi/naimi text (avr microcontroller...) and want to use and modify an LCD sketch from the arduino.cc site or from the text and AVR studio 5, to see if I can at least get this thing to light up and say something. Eventually I want to have it give readouts from sensors for various parameters like windspeed, barometric pressure, etc, but for now just want it to talk. I have a number of questions on some things I dont understand: 1) I see the diagram for the connections of the various ports A, B, C of the chip to a 14-pin optrex LCD (similar to the vfd); the datasheet for the chip does not give the corresponding header pin positions on the uno board, I mean, shouldn't there be the same number of and corresponding header positions as there are port pins? 2) the vfd does not have pins for backlights and backlight ground; all this is supposed to be activated by the code, so I take it the code downloaded should cater for this fact and any part of the code with backlight pins called out (as in some sketches in arduino.cc) be eliminated.
Can you please help me to finally get this thing to work.
Thanks.
Dave.
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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:42 am

Re: vfd

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

dvlee wrote:1) I see the diagram for the connections of the various ports A, B, C of the chip to a 14-pin optrex LCD (similar to the vfd); the datasheet for the chip does not give the corresponding header pin positions on the uno board, I mean, shouldn't there be the same number of and corresponding header positions as there are port pins?
Are you referring to the fact that the arduino "pins" don't exactly correspond to the GPIO ports of the ATmega328? You can find a handy map here:
http://arduino.cc/en/Hacking/Atmega168Hardware
2) the vfd does not have pins for backlights and backlight ground; all this is supposed to be activated by the code, so I take it the code downloaded should cater for this fact and any part of the code with backlight pins called out (as in some sketches in arduino.cc) be eliminated.
Sounds right.

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