How to drive a Vacuum Fluorescent display with a Raspberry Pi: Raspberry Pi VFD Clock 

Yes. If you try setting it to odd, the program will throw an error and crash. The Raspberry Pi onboard serial cannot be configured with odd parity.

Yes, looking back on the video, that would probably have been a better plan! Code is well commented on GitHub, but I will happily take your comment on board and do a better job next time!

Thanks! Yes, you are right, but I need to display | and - twice per "revolution". :-)

@@LesLaboratory Indeed, '|/-\' is only half a revolution, but that doesn't matter: there is no need to store more than that in the spinner variable. Note that if you really want to store a full revolution, then you should set spinner to '|/-\|/-\'. Your code is missing the last character, hence the tiny glitch in the animation.

@@edgarbonet1Sure, if RAM was tight, you would absolutely only store the required characters. Re: The Spinner var, so it is, well spotted!

Not with this code. I have not had a real chance to play with the Pico, but it does seem like a very capable microcontroller. If you can make it talk serial, it should be possible to write code for it.

Probably, the code is minimal. you would have to redefine the serial port though.

@@LesLaboratory Other than that there wouldn't be anything else?

@@HIDLad001 not that I can think of, but tbh, I ain't a Windows guy.

@@LesLaboratory I would use a raspberry pi, but they are really expensive right now. Oh, and would I need to short out that jumper, or just leave it the way it is?

No, but all the parts are available inexpensively. Pi zeroes are around 5 bucks and old POS displays can be had on eBay for about the same if you are patient. All the code is on my github (see the link in the description)