Re: USB scrolling LED signs

[Kim Wall <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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On 27/10/09 21:53, Jamie Bennett wrote:
> I'm looking for a LED display that I can routinely send messages to
via
> usb through the command line (I only have Linux based machines here)
and
> is of a reasonable wall-mounted size (around 1 meter?).

> Anyone seen something like this at a reasonable price?


I have a couple of these: <http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135289>

They speak serial at 2400 baud (so are very tolerant of line length),
rather than USB, but I'm sure a dongle will work.  The supplied software
is Windows and awful, but the protocol is fairly straightforward if
you've got a Windows machine and Realterm available to reverse-engineer
the bits you need - it's basically ASCII text with sequences of bytes as
a preamble and to set colour, font etc.

They're a little on the cheap and naff side, most notably there's a
occasionally visible redraw if you display static text, and it emits an
annoying 'bip!' sound every time it receives new data (I ended up
de-soldering the sounder, as I wanted a default "HH:MM" clock
display,
redrawn by the computer every minute in the absence of a more
interesting message), but they are a fraction of the price of 'proper'
LED signs.

I'm driving them from some horribly hackish Java code that does assorted
automation tasks, to provide deaf-friendly visual indication of caller
ID, doorbell and the like.


Kim.
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