CU209SCPB Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) module (1 Line, 20 Chars), Serial interface.

Vacuum Fluorescent Displays (VFD) have been around for quite some time, but they are still popular. You will find them in audio and video equipment (eg DVD players), Point-Of-Sale stations, car displays etc. They are not cheap, unless produced in large numbers. However, they look good since they have nice bright colors and are readable in daylight. The best known types are the seven segment displays (e.g. alarmclock radios). The optimal type for showing characters is a dot matrix type display. This library interfaces to a Noritake Itron CU209SCPB-T20A module that supports 1 line of 20 characters in 5x7 dot matrix representation. It has internal memory for all characters and will continuously output that data to the display. The device has a built-in character ROM for international and Katakana fonts and supports 8 user defined characters (UDC) as well. It supports dimming (brightness control) of the display and a blinking Cursor. The device can be controlled by 8bit parallel or Serial bus. The Lib supports 'printf' type of output and UDCs. The module has an onboard DC/DC converter to generate the VFD supply voltage and the filament voltage and only requires 5V supply.

The general Notebook page for VFD devices is here.