4 Oct
2006
4 Oct
'06
1:22 p.m.
Don wrote:
[snippety snip]
Yep - given the application, I expect each digit probably needs to be 3-4"
tall to give a game grid height of somewhere around 3ft.
Power consumption would need to be low; even with 7-seg displays, an average
of 5 segments per digit would be on at any one time, which means over 400
segments for a full game board. With displays comprising more segments, the
numbers get big fairly quick.
Purely 'just because'. It may be that the idea of using perspex/plexiglass
just doesn't work because it can't be bent to the small diameters needed for a
target 4" max height without cracks appearing that'll destroy any
light-transmitting ability. Or it may be that idea just plain doesn't work
anyway! I'm just wondering if something more pleasing to the eye - akin to a
Nixie - is achievable over a plain old 7-segment display...
You haven't said what your viewing conditions are
-- darkened room,
direct sunlight, etc. There are different display technologies
that can be exploited in each.
Indoors; natural light / fluorescent overheads. It was my question about what
to do with Nixies that prompted me to wonder what interesting museum projects
could potentially be done with a lot more numerical displays...
I hit on the idea of a big wall-mount Sudoku game, either controlled purely by
TTL logic, or by some 'period' single-board machine. That means 81 numeric
displays are needed, with the ability to vary the intensity of each digit (in
order to show which digits can be modified during a game and which can't).
There's also the notion of displaying some sort of cursor position, but that's
easy and do-able in all sorts of ways.
Of course all
of this is just a precursor to see if anyone else has
built big displays like this as part of a project, and what they found
worked well (or otherwise)
I built a "display" with 4 ft digits. Very hard to read "up close"
:> It may be that
I can get away with having the curved sections live
'inside' the boxes (i.e. it won't be noticeable from a distance
anyway), so that there are no points of overlap; time will tell there.
Is there a reason for the aesthetics? Or, "just because"? Your "segments" may well end up being LED
"bars" -- which
usually have 3 or 4 discrete lamps in them for more uniform
intensity.
Certainly possible for a 7-segment approach. Although I an see us putting the
word out and being able to source large amounts of LEDs (particularly the
common types), but anything 'custom' would mean $$$...
Some vacuum flourescents come with "curved"
corners and larger
sizes (look at some of the early pinball machines).
See, that sort of thing would be great - or finding another 72 decimal Nixies
:-) (although presumably intensity can't be controlled as it can with LEDs,
which means some other way is needed of showing which digits are fixed and
which the player can modify)
You also need to consider (in your power/intensity
budget)
That's the big problem with a 'lots of LEDs' approach. Hence the speculation
as to whether an LED can be shone along the length of a bit of clear plastic
that's sealed on 3 sides and whether it'd give enough light.
I assume you want to do this on a shoestring budget?
Short-term, yes. I'm just exploring possibilities really and seeing if
something can be done with materials that are readily available as junk. If
not, I'll just scribble some notes down and it can go on the ideas pile;
longer term maybe there'll be a budget, or sponsorship, or we'll just happen
to have someone donate lots of dot-matrix LED modules etc. :-)
[How to control this using only TTL logic is possibly a separate thread and of
more interest to people on this list!]
cheers
Jules
--
A. Because it destroys the natural flow of conversation.
Q. What's wrong with top posting ?