#381 

FYI for everyone: these were used as the displays in AT&T/Lucent/Avaya 8434DX desk phones. The 8434s feed -48VDC to the last two pins of the display, in case anyone was curious how high the display voltage might go...

I have found the traditional niche application for this type of display is continuous cold weather (below freezing) operation. I have found that you can use these displays down to very low temps (most VFDs to -40 degrees f). Many LCDs just stop working at very low temperatures, and large dot matrix LEDs choices limited. OLEDs may be an alternative, but I have not tested at low temps. For cold weather vehicle testing I designed some custom test instrumentation using Noritake VFDs. At some point, the vehicle would not start, and barely any systems would work if at all, but the VFDs had no problems. The blue color is also very easy on the eyes. It was somehow fitting that in a frozen vehicle the only indication of life was the blue glow from the VFD displays.

VFDs really only require around 25V for non-multiplexed and 50V for multiplexed displays to drive them. Small tubes like the IV-18 I've gotten to run happily around 35V. I recently designed a small vfd clock that generates the drive voltage from 5V using a discrete boost converter.

Sorry to be nitpicking, but 40-50V isn't "extremely high voltage" - Also those HD44780 Character LCD's are not TFT. It's not active matrix. It's a passive TN/STN display. It's the first Itron display that i see that doesn't run off of 5V entirely. I am sure you can power it from the secondary side of the stepdown-transformer on the board and it would be happy with 5V DC entirely.

Very nice displays --- 40 chars really gives a lot of flexibility. 👍 Let us know if you use one of these in a project. 😀

Very cool. Thanks for sharing this....

@16:01. yes, current hungry. I have a very similar VFD with what looks like the same interface and yes it worked on a normal Hitachi connector 16 pin. EXCEPT for the 700mA being drawn on the 2 pins that would have driven the LED backlighting on the LCD. needless to say the tiny FET on my LCD backpack let its smoke out. easy fix. By the way , we still have AM radio here in OZ. these displays obliterate my favorite stations.

Happy Monday! =)

I been looking for a Noritake 3 or 4 line at least 20 characters wide.

very cool , pls share the PCB

I'd buy one if it had an easy to use interface and it wasn't $200 :)