Skip to main content

USB seven segment display module

This project is about an open source, USB based, 10 digit seven segment display unit. This unit is specifically designed to work with POS systems and banking applications. Initially, this system is developed to work with PC based systems, and later it was modified to work with other platforms and applications.

Final view of the USB seven segment display module

To simplify the communication interface this unit is designed to emulate a COM port in the host terminal. Because of this feature, this module can work with many systems without having any additional device driver(s).

To extend the scope of this unit, it also comes with an option to switch between "direct mode" and "API mode". In "direct mode" application or host device can directly send characters to the display unit over the emulated serial communication channel.

The "API mode" is intended to provide more extensive features with this unit. All the "API mode" functionalities of this display module are described in the API documentation at github.com/dilshan/usb-external-display.

The back side of the display module

This USB external display unit is designed around STM32F103CB MCU. The firmware of this display unit operates with most of the STM32F103 series MCUs, which including STM32 Blue Pill board.

The dimensions of the PCB is 149.6mm × 44mm and designed as two layer board. To overcome the PCB manufacturing cost, we employ many surface-mounted components into the design.

All the source code and design files related to this project are available at github.com/dilshan/usb-external-display.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CD2003 - yet another simple FM radio receiver

In the last few days, we are looking for some simple FM radio receiver to integrate into one of our ongoing projects. For that, we try several FM radio receiver ICs including TDA7000, CD2003/TA2003/TA8164, CXA1019, and KA22429. Out of all those chips we select CD2003 (or TA2003/TA8164) based receiver for our project because of its simplicity and outstanding performance. Except to CD2003, Sony CXA1019 also perform well but we drop it because of its higher component count. We design our receiver based on Toshiba TA2003 datasheet and later we try TA8164 and CD2003 with the same circuit. Either CD2003 or TA8164 can directly replace TA2003 IC, and as per our observations, TA8164 gives excellent results out of those 3 chips. A prototype version of CD2003 FM radio receiver The PCB design and schematic which we used in our prototype project are available to download at google drive (including pin-outs of crystal filters and inductors ). Except for CD2003 IC, this receiver consist

Arduino superheterodyne receiver

In this project, we extend the shortwave superheterodyne receiver we developed a few years ago . Like the previous design, this receiver operates on the traditional superheterodyne principle.  In this upgrade, we enhanced the local oscillator with Si5351 clock generator module and Arduino control circuit. Compared to the old design, this new receiver uses an improved version of an intermediate frequency amplifier with 3 I.F transformers. In this new design, we divide this receiver into several blocks, which include, mixer with a detector, a local oscillator, and an I.F amplifier. The I.F amplifier builds into one PCB. The filter stage, mixer, and detector stages place in another PCB. Prototype version of 455kHz I.F amplifier. In this prototype build, the Si5351 clock generator drives using an Arduino Uno board. With the given sketch, the user can tune and switch the shortwave meter bands using a rotary encoder. The supplied sketch support clock generation from 5205kHz (tuner frequ

Calculator for audio output transformers

Audio output transformers are heavily used in a vacuum tube and some (older) transistor base audio power amplifiers, but these days output transformer are quite hard to find and expensive item. For homebrew projects, the best option is to construct those transformers by ourselves and this script helps to calculate winding parameters for those transformers. This " AF output transformer calculator " script is written using Python and it works with most of the commonly available Python interpreters . The script is available to download at google drive under the terms of GNU General Public License version 3.0 . Homebrewed 25k: 4 output transformer Once supplied the input parameters this script provides a winding ratio, the number of turns required for primary and secondary winding and required copper wire gauges for both primary and secondary windings, etc. We construct several AF output transformers based on results of this script, which including transformers for M