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Alpha Centauri

Big Alphanumeric Display Board – A pile of ultra-bright palm-sized 16-segment alphanumeric displays with network-based control

ben-pattersonBen Patterson
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  • ben-pattersonBen Patterson

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ongoing project
led pwm shift registers arduino ethernet

This project was created on 05/03/2017 and last updated 8 years ago.

Description

This one has been sitting in a box for years. At the time I wasn't entirely sure how to power these huge and bright displays, but I did get the ideas around control right.

Using high power output shift registers, the 128 segments can be individually controlled from a single set of data, clock and enable pins.

Prototyping with the Freetronics Ethernet, an Arduino reference design with WizNet ethernet control is custom built into pluggable, multi-purpose modules supporting open lighting control protocols.

Components

  • 16 × TPIC6B595 Power Logic 8-Bit Shift Register
  • 8 × BL-S230B-12 LED NUMERIC DISPLAY Ultra White

Project Logs
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  • Fixing Shift Register Instability

    Ben Patterson • 05/11/2017 at 12:06 • 0 comments

    Such a simple fix! It occured to me that I had left the Shift Register Clear pin floating. Tying it high (active low) immediately stabilised the output and reduced flicker to imperceivable levels!

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