Yes! Well, it was a hell of a lot of tedious work involving some 92 solder joints in all. But I was able to remove the display from one of the matrix-orbital vacuum flourescent display modules and make extension cables betwen the driver module and the actual glass display. Up until now I had the whole module embedded in my sleeve which was too bulky, heavy, and uncomfortable. I made a custom cable that goes from a 10-pin serial port header on the mighty mite carrier board to the VFD driver module. The driver module is now connected to the display with about three feet of ribbon cable, so all I need in the sleeve is the glass display, the driver module resides in the jacket body lining. I also have custom ribbon cables running from the display driver to a small 3x2 membrane keypad on my sleeve and six tiny LEDs under the display on my sleeve (the display driver hardware also has a keypad interface and six general purpose outputs that I am using to switch LEDs on and off). It was a nerve-wracking experience and soldering onto the pcb was not fun, but it was definitely worth it. I find that using a 4x20 display is very useful in a wearable design for things that don't require a lot of user input. For example I can display GPS data, sensor readings, system state, etc. Also, having it on my sleeve is very convenient, I can actually use it safely while driving, including reading info and pressing buttons on my sleeve cuff keypad. Another thing that I like a lot is the readability of the VFD displays, they are very bright. I am going to add a polarized filter which will make this thing readable in direct sunlight. I will try to get some pictures up soon so you can see what it looks like. If you are interested in trying this module out, you can find it here: http://www.matrix-orbital.com/vfd-home.htm http://www.emjembedded.com/products/alnumdisplays/vfd.html I have written a set of Java classes that make a nice API to the matrix-orbital displays. This allows me to send simple commands like clearDisplay() and positionCursor(x,y) and drawVerticalGraph(x,y,z) etc rather than sending hex escape codes. Soon I will make these classes available if anyone wants to try them out. -- Doug -- Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org
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