NP-41 Emulator (may be)

[Didier Lachieze]

(08-18-2015 12:29 AM)Chris Chung Wrote:  @didier, not sure about the display yet. I was just glad to migrate Eric's code onto the platform, the LCD segment driving is a plus.

There are 3 options that I thought about regarding the display.

a) stock 6 digit 14 segment LED modules are available, we can have 2 of these + labelled round led for the indicators like PGM, USER, ALPHA, etc.

b) graphic LCD module, characters will be 5x7 dot characters.

c) custom LCD glass, modelled from the original.

The MCU I am using will do well on all options. My preference is c). This is a retro toy thing project for me so it's important to have the 14 segment glass in it.

Cost will be an issue though, I will be trying some custom glass providers and see if it's an affordable solution. From my research, the setup (w/ 3-5 samples) would cost $900-$1000 and unit cost is like $4 or $5 per @ 500/1000 unit batches.

Now what do you think (regarding the display)?

I am also fond of the 14-segment display of the 41 and would love to see such a display used on a replica, so my preference goes also to option c).
I was expecting a custom LCD glass to cost much more than your initial quote, so it seems that if you can get 50 people interested by the NP-41 project the NRE of a custom LCD would be around $20 which is something I would gladly pay to avoid a standard dot-matrix LCD.