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Display VFD48-1202FN analog style © GPL3+

(http://opensource.org/licenses/GPL-3.0)

How to control the VFD48 display with Arduino Uno

clocks (/projecthub/projects/tags/clocks) vfd48 (/projecthub/projects/tags/vfd48)

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COMPONENTS AND SUPPLIES 

Arduino UNO
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Texas Instruments Shift Register-

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Temperature Sensor
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Rotary Encoder with Push-

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Toggle Switch, (On)-Off-(On)

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Evaluation Board, ISL8117A

Synchronous Buck Converter
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ABOUT THIS PROJECT 

My son gave me this vfd48 display and I did not know what to do with it.
I searched on the internet for solutions, but there was none with arduino.
So a few months ago I decided to make the display to work. I downloaded the datasheet
and made in excel an overview of all the commands to use.

VFD48

 PREVIOUS • • • • •
NEXT 
The datasheet says that the filamentvoltage is 2.4 VAC, but it works well with 1.5 VDC.
Also the grid and anode voltages should be 30 VDC, but it works fine with 20 VDC. It has
12 grids, 16 anodes.
I use 4 shiftregisters, 4 transistordrivers, a RTC ds3231 and a temperature sensor LM35.
It took a lot of soldering to make the connections to the transistordrivers. See photo.
(http://photo.the/)The black heat shrink tubing on the left and right are te filament
connections.

connections of the VFD48

 PREVIOUS • •
NEXT 

When you look at the schematics, you see that I used two lcd displays to represent the
vfd48 display. M2 is the buckconverter for the filament voltage. Adjust it to 1.5 VDC. M1
buckconverter is the voltage for the grid and anode voltage. Adjust it to 20 VDC. The
three black heat shrink tubing on the left and right are in parallel. The output of
shiftregister IC1 A0 connects to pin 6 of VFD48. This is the first green connection right
(see photo). The numbering is from right to left, 6 to 33 (most right green = 6, most left
yellow =33)
In the schematics output A0 of the shiftregister connects to input 1 of the
transistordriver, but when you assemble it, it appears that output A0 connects to input
8, A1 to input 7 etc.
So: (see page 6 of the datasheet)
 VFD48 - IC1 VFD48 - IC2 VDF48 - IC3 VFD48 - IC4

Pin 6 - A0 Pin 14 - A0 Pin 18 - A0 Pin 26 - A0

Pin 7 - A1 Pin 15 - A1 Pin 19 - A1 Pin 27 - A1

Pin 8 - A2 Pin 16 - A2 Pin 20 - A2 Pin 28 - A2

Pin 9 - A3 Pin 17 - A3 Pin 21 - A3 Pin 29 - A3

Pin 10 - A4 Pin 22 - A4 Pin 30 - A4

pin 11 - A5 Pin 23 - A5 Pin 31 - A5

Pin 12 - A6 Pin 24 - A6 Pin 32 - A6

Pin 13 - A7 Pin 25 - A7 Pin 33 - A7

part of the code in excel

Program ........
The program checks in the main loop the status of the three switches.
With three switches there are 8 functions.
The 8 functions are:
function 000: Display time with a small secondhand

small secondhand
function 001: Display time with a large secondhand
function 010: Display time without secondhand
function 011: Display temperature
function 100: Adjust hour
function 101: Adjust minute ( and seconds)
function 110: Display time with a small secondhand
function 111: Nightmode (between 0 - 8 am >> No display)

temperature indication

Function 011 shows the temperature: (See photo above)

The small indicators at the 12,2,4,6,8 and 10 positions are lit. The minutehand shows the
temperature in celsius. As you can see at the photo the hand is at the 25 minutes
position, indicating 25 degrees of celsius. Also a small hand between 12 and 2, indicating
the number of tens after the comma. The small hand indicates 5, so the temperature is
25.5 degrees celsius.

VFD48
CODE 

VFD48 Arduino   (/PROJECTHUB/CODE_FILES/603339/DOWNLOAD)

Control the VFD48 Display

2
1 // made by Jan G
SCHEMATICS 

V
F
D
4 DOWNLOAD (HTTPS://HACKSTERIO.S3.AMAZONAWS.COM/UPLOADS/ATTACHMENTS/1467262/VFD48SKETC
8

Display VFD48

V DOWNLOAD (HTTPS://HACKSTERIO.S3.AMAZONAWS.COM/UPLOADS/ATTACHMENTS/1468467/VFD48-DATA
D
F
4
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datasheet

COMMENTS 

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gattobruno (/projecthub/gattobruno)
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AUTHOR

(/projecthub/nankie)
jg53fn55 (/projecthub/nankie) 
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