To the person who is building an LED caller id display--

In issue 31 (Feb. 1993) of Circuit Cellar Ink, Tom Cantrell describes a
part by HP-- the HDSP-211x.  The '211x is an eight-character LED display.
Each character is made of an array of 5x7 LEDs.  It's a 28-pin DIP part
that includes all the driver circuitry to display ASCII characters-- you
could even do the caller's name!  It's available in red, yellow, and green.
It allows custom character creation.  It is driven with a parallel
interface.  The article does not go into technical detail, but it appears
from a diagram that the pins are  labelled !RD, !WR, D0-D7, A0,A2, A3, A4,
!FL, !CE, !RST, CLK and CLS.

The article is three years old, but if the part is still available, even if
it's expensive, it's GOTTA be cheaper than all the support circuitry that
would be needed for individual drivers.  Plus, the interface will be a lot
easier, cutting your development time and costs.

Let me know what you find out.

-Matt


P.S. The HDSP-250x is the same part but is 7mm high, versus 5mm for the '211x.



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