2 August 2011

New alphanumeric LED display - DSP-0801

2 August 2011


It took six PCB revisions and countless tweaks until we were happy with it - but finally we're are delighted to present our latest product, the DSP-0801, an 8 digit 14 segment alphanumeric display.

DSP-0801 8 digit alpha display

Powered by a PIC18F14K50 with two CAT4016 chips running the displays, this display is designed to make it easy to interface to. You can talk to it over TTL serial at 115,200 bps, or via synchronous (clocked) serial, also allowing you to daisy chain modules together to create even bigger displays. Of course the firmware supplied does all this out of the box, but there's nothing stopping you replacing the firmware for your own nefarious purposes! It could, for example, talk directly to a RTC / Temp sensor module, to display time and temperature - add a SoundOut module to make it a talking clock, or use all those digits to show the humidity with 24 bit accuracy. There's a BoostBloader bootloader in built, or you can use the ICSP port to reprogram it with a PicKit2.

The possibilities are endless! Available in red, blue and yellow, and shipping now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It sounds fine!
Can you control it via RS232 (PC COM Port) ? And will you have full access to every led segment individually, via RS232 Com port?

Ian Harris said...

You'll need a RS232 to TTL serial converter, or a USB to TTL serial converter if you want to go direct with USB. The present firmware doesn't allow each individual segment to be addressed, but the next version will. We've had a few requests for that!

kind regards
Ian.