“How to control the VFD48 display with Arduino
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.
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. The black heat shrink tubing on the left and right are te filament connections.
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.”