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Yay!
So I knew I'd be somewhat bored in the hotel here in El Paso. Sooo.. I decided to bring some toys along with me.
Here's the table in my hotel room:
So I was working on these nifty little devices, Siemens DLG 7137 Smart Matrix LED Displays. I got a bunch of them from Astro Too in Melbourne. Was only a couple bucks for the board loaded with a bunch of them.
They're small, smart displays that contain a small control IC.. It has a ASCII character generator, a memory, and a few other little things built inside, that lets you control it by using 6 pins, with a write pin and chip enable pin.
I wanted to see if i could control them easily. At first, I thought they were only simple matrices I'd have to control via strobing, but I found out they're actually very useful parts. They can create letters, number, and symbols by setting just the 6 input lines and then toggling the write line. I succeeded in making it display a few characters, but then I wanted to try and get it to work with my new LeafLabs Maple
So, I wired up a few more, and tested to make sure my understanding was correct. Took a little video to show what i was doing.
Then, I finally hooked up the Maple, and after much troubleshooting (due to me still figuring out the Maple's differences from the Arduino) I was able to get it printing characters! Now i'm looking into writing a little library to write out characters to it. Perhaps words too, once i build a small board with a decoder for the chip enable lines... Knowing this, I may go and pick up the rest of them.. :)
Do you guys like reading stuff? Should I keep posting more stuff like this that I'm doing? I worry this is too techie for most of my readers..
So I knew I'd be somewhat bored in the hotel here in El Paso. Sooo.. I decided to bring some toys along with me.
Here's the table in my hotel room:
So I was working on these nifty little devices, Siemens DLG 7137 Smart Matrix LED Displays. I got a bunch of them from Astro Too in Melbourne. Was only a couple bucks for the board loaded with a bunch of them.
They're small, smart displays that contain a small control IC.. It has a ASCII character generator, a memory, and a few other little things built inside, that lets you control it by using 6 pins, with a write pin and chip enable pin.
I wanted to see if i could control them easily. At first, I thought they were only simple matrices I'd have to control via strobing, but I found out they're actually very useful parts. They can create letters, number, and symbols by setting just the 6 input lines and then toggling the write line. I succeeded in making it display a few characters, but then I wanted to try and get it to work with my new LeafLabs Maple
So, I wired up a few more, and tested to make sure my understanding was correct. Took a little video to show what i was doing.
Click to viewThen, I finally hooked up the Maple, and after much troubleshooting (due to me still figuring out the Maple's differences from the Arduino) I was able to get it printing characters! Now i'm looking into writing a little library to write out characters to it. Perhaps words too, once i build a small board with a decoder for the chip enable lines... Knowing this, I may go and pick up the rest of them.. :)
Do you guys like reading stuff? Should I keep posting more stuff like this that I'm doing? I worry this is too techie for most of my readers..