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Old-school display
Posted on April 1st, 2011 No commentsI picked-up a job-lot of old LEDs from my friend Mike Harrison. One thing that immediately caught me eye in there was an old Hewlett-Packard 5082-7415. Anyone under about 35 won’t recognise this item, but in the good old days the first 7 segment LED displays were so small that they needed to have a lens over the top to make them large enough to read. The display on my first calculator was just like this and I’ve retained a fondness for them.
In this case the display had obviously been taken from equipment and the pins are quite badly damaged. However I managed to rig it in to an upside-down IC tester clip. Once in there I could confirm that electrically all was working perfectly.
At the moment I am building the display in to a nice little surprise circuit. More on that soon, but here is the prototype:
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Makerfaire UK (2011)
Posted on April 1st, 2011 No commentsBetter late than never: a few comments on Makerfaire UK.
Once again the crew in Newcastle did us proud. Got a great location for Lunar Lander and Cyclepong. Both machines were crowded all day. In the case of Cyclepong it all got a bit much and the spokes on one of the bikes sheered off!
Great to see a few old friends again including John Honniball and his lovely plotter and the Oomlout team.