> Have you looked at bistable mechanical displays? =A0They have a hinged
> (or axle'd) panel with a magnet placed somewhere on the panel. =A0...

Thought about, yes.
Tried, no yet.

That's what I meant by

> eyeball dual state indicators
> aka airline display boards),

& / or

> solenoid bi-state (or dual coil latching relay style) . ...

BUT it's good to have it independently mentioned.
The more ideas the better.

LCD seems a reasonably good choice if it can meet the environmental
needs - mainly temperature.
It does leave the need to AC drive but that is potentially bearable.
In a lowest possible hardware and current implementation it would be
nice to not have to attend to the display at all apart from when
switching states.

There are many possible solutions. Finding the best is going to be 'fun'.

> Micro size that - use very tiny panels, magnets (or weakly magnetize
> the panel itself), and a very tiny coil behind it.

Hadn't thought of magnetised panels :-).

A look at the mechanism in a typical cheap battery clock is liable to
be a useful education for many. Much simpler than that appears about
impossible. Very very cheap to implement. Functionally much the same
as the above solution. And good for 10's of million of reliable
operations! (Stepping once a second you hit 10 million steps in just
under 116 days).


      Russell

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