What is it?

This is a VFD Glass with VFD driver/controller, high voltage and filament voltage power supply on a single board. It can be easily interfaced with popular Arduinos making your project attractive and unique. The board also has a buzzer to play simple tunes or just beep, a light sensor to adjust VFD brightness, and RGB LED which can be PWM driven and an IR receiver to control your project remotely.

Why did you make it?

The solution requires only single power supply (+5V) with high voltage and filament voltages generated internally without need of using customised bulky transformers and it contains readily available and cheap electronic components. Still the solution is free from typical problems of simplified designs - there is no such things as ghosting effect or gradient of brightness along the length of the VFD glass. Industrial modular VFD panels are expensive, non-open source and fully assembled which make it impossible to change anything in design... and there is no fun as there is nothing to assemble!

What makes it special?

• Single power source (+5V) which makes it possible to drive the panel from a USB port or batteries, high and filament voltages are generated internally;
• No need in transformer which is usually a non-off-the-shelf part resulting in cheaper, lightweight and compact solution;
• Pulse filament drive is used, an equivalent of AC (as opposed to DC) eliminating brightness gradient across the length of the VFD glass;
• Popular, inexpensive and widely available chips are used to generate filament and high voltages, very low risk of them becoming obsolete;
• Feedback in high voltage generator circuitry helps to achieve constant brightness regardless of number segments and digits lit up;
• Adjustable high voltage to get highest brightness without reducing VFD lifetime;
• Adjustable DC offset for filament voltage to maximise VFD brightness and cut off ghosting effect;
• An inexpensive and popular VFD driver is used which is produced by several silicone manufactures under different names but in the same package with pin-to-pin compatibility also reducing the risk of the part becoming obsolete;
• Low power mode;
• An infra red (IR) receiver;
• A buzzer;
• An RGB LED;
• A photocell (light sensor);
• A dedicated VFD driver is controlled by SPI-like two wire iterface taking care of display refresh and offloading main CPU (even Arduino Uno can cope with the job);
• Most parts are through hole making it very easy to assemble even by DIY enthusiasts with average soldering skills;