I thought GU280X16G-7003 would be *GREAT* for this project... The original VFD is 134 mm wide and 22 mm tall with display area of 113mm x 11 mm. I was reading the spec of GU280X16G-7003, which says 137.05 mm x 11.0 mm. "Perfect!" I was thinking (see this post). Shortly after, I ordered it from Noritake online store and received the box a few days later.When I unpacked and had the VFD in my hand, I immediately had bad feeling. The dimension of the VFD is that of its display area, and the actual PCB dimension is whopping 182 mm x 33.5 mm...
After beating myself up over this for a few days, I ordered the half-size VFD (GU140X16G-7903) on sale. This module, which display area is half of GU280X16G-7003, can display full Japanese character set (Shift-JIS) which may be a good feature to have to display info of Japanese music or video. (BTW, if you are interested in VFDs, noritake-vfd.com has great prices for their special sale promotion items.)
I've decided to keep GU280X16G kit as GU140X16G turned out to be just PCB module. The kit comes with a RS-232 cable with AC adapter prong, which is useful for development. The DB9 connector of the cable houses an IC chip to convert CMOS signals to RS-232. Because I prefer USB connection (neither of my desktop nor laptop PCs have serial port, does yours?) I actually disassembled the cable to keep the 2 cables.
VFD-PC Interface
Here's the pic of the actual device hookups:
FTDI's UB232R UART-to-USB interface module (the little PCB module on the breadboard) connects to the PC with mini-USB connection. Of 7 pins available on VFD's CN2 Connector, only 4 are use:
| VFD CN2 Pin | UB232R Pin | Power Cable | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | Description | Number | Description | Description |
| 1 | VCC (red) | 5V (red) | ||
| 2 | SIN (brown) | 8 | TXD | |
| 3 | GND (orange) | 1 | GND | GND (orange) |
| 4 | SBUSY (yellow) | 3 | CTS# | |
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