[Markus] noticed a lack of 7 segment LED displays that could show RGB. Like any hacker, he sought to remedy this. The solution he came up with was to basically remove all the electronics from the plastic body of the display. He then mounted new surface mount RGB LEDs in the correct places. This may be a bit messy, and definitely increased the footprint in this layout, but as you can see from the pictures on his site, the final result is quite nice. What uses can you think of for these?
[flickr video= 3187384682]
[Furan] wanted a way to let people know his status at the office. Maybe he didn’t want to be bothered, or wanted to let them know he was on break. His solution is to set up an OLED display outside his office to display his status. He’s using a 4d systems OLED display. He has a windows application that updates the status, with plans of making it synchronize with his messenger status. Its a fairly cool idea, but just watching the video, we have no idea what some of the icons are supposed to mean. We would possibly choose something a little more obvious and generic, like text stating our status. What would you use?
MacMod member [EdsJunk] has modified the Apple logo on his MacBook to act as a second video display (cache). There’s a video embedded below showing it playing Quicktime videos and the iTunes visualizer. Unfortunately there aren’t any details of the hardware used. From the display settings, it looks to have a resolution of at least 640×480. We hope to see more details soon.
We spotted this odd piece of geek couture on DVICE today. It’s a bracelet that displays incoming calls via Bluetooth and also vibrates. The intended use is kinda interesting, but we wonder what else could be done with it. Could you update it with any text you want by creating fake caller ID messages? You could have your laptop in your backpack and have the bracelet update when it finds an open access point or any other sort of notification. The display shows the word “Connecting” in pictures, but apparently only displays numbers for incoming calls. It also includes a button to reject calls.
Do you have a project that needs a wireless display? Are there other options like this? At $25, this might be worth a try.
We love old display technology, like Nixie tubes, but they’re often difficult to work with because they require higher voltages than digital logic. Vacuum florescent displays (VFD) fall into this category. While not necessarily “old”, they are becoming far less common than LCDs. The main benefit of a VFD is that it actually produces light directly; it doesn’t require a backlight. You’ll find these displays on various players and appliances: CD, DVD, VCR, microwaves, stoves, car headunits, and others.
[Sprite_tm] had written off some VFDs, but recently revisited them with renewed interest. He started by testing what sort of voltage would be required to drive the display. It took 3V for the filament plus 15V to drive the grids. There are VFD controller chips available, but he wanted to get this working with what he had on hand. He had experience with older 40xx series logic, which can be powered by much higher voltages than 5V 74xx. His final schematic has three 4094 serial to parallel chips with an ATtiny2313 controller. A 5V power supply is dropped to 3V with diodes to drive the filament while a boost converter brings it up to 15V for the 4094s that switch the segments. While the code is specific to this display, it would be a great place to start your own project.
The Texas Advanced Computing Center has built one of the largest tiled displays ever. They arranged 75 30inch Dell displays in a 5×15 pattern. The overall the system has 36GB of graphics memory and 108GB of system memory. They intend on using the system to display very large data sets. If you think the size seems arbitrary, it is. They just happened to purchase five more monitors than the University of California San Diego.
[via Engadget]
Part of the pre-Vista hype was the idea of auxiliary displays. Laptop and desktop displays would provide additional information from your computer. The Vista SideShow feature hasn’t really caught on and the surplus hardware has started to drop in price. Take this PicoLCD for example: It’s a 4×20 character LCD with an IR receiver, multiple buttons, and a USB connection. The best part is: it has Linux drivers and an open source SDK. We know a lot of you like wiring up HD44780 based screens, but it’s hard to pass up a $50 prepackaged solution with such nice extras.
[via Engadget]
