Hi Gideon,
What are you studying at university? We're starting to get to the
point where you should be able to start figuring it out. Definitely
shouldn't look like voodoo...
Start with the Datasheet:
http://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/MAX6921-MAX6931.pdf
The datasheet tells us that the part is SPI (Serial interface), which
means it is much easier to talk to than a I2C part. I'm not going to be
able to help you with arduino, I've never used one. I always just
program the Atmel microcontroller directly and use the part directly
without the arduino bootloader/sketches business. To each their own. One
of the huge advantages of the Arduino, though, is supposed to be the
availability of community libraries to support these parts. I would
maybe look a little harder or consider switching components to something
that already has a community library written for it. I linked you the
code/schematic to my VFD clock which uses a max6921. It's not arduino
sketch, it is atmel microcontroller C code. I think that you should be
able to figure it out.
Worst case, the arduino sketches are guaranteed to include support for
sending a command via SPI.
http://elbastl.sweb.cz/6-digit-VFD.zip
The part of the code that you should be interested in is the part that I
cribbed from Limor's IceClock. Specifically, the spi_xfer(), vfd_send(),
setdisplay(). Setdisplay will definitely need to be modified to suit
your clock, but spi_xfer and vfd_send are the 'voodoo' that you are
trying to understand. Look at the schematic in that file to see how SPI
parts are electrically connected to the microcontroller.
-Adam
On 11/21/2013 12:11 PM, Gideon Wackers wrote:
Well after all the great help with the hardware part of the arduino I
have been looking at the code for my clock. For clarity I thought it
would be better to open a new thread just about the software.
What I want to make is a four digit clock with IV-11 VFD's that simply
starts at 12:00 and starts running, no fancy menus or anything. Time
will be set with two buttons; Button A increases the hours by 1,
Button B increaes the minutes by 1. Pretty simply one would say but
after looking at various other peoples code such as:
https://github.com/8163jb/VFD/blob/master/MAX6921_With_RTC/MAX6921_With_RTC.ino
http://www.vonnieda.org/tc18
http://learn.adafruit.com/ice-tube-clock-kit/
I am completely lost.
I do understand how to create the digit pattern in an effective way
such as shown
here:http://www.hacktronics.com/Tutorials/arduino-and-7-segment-led.html But
when I see other peoples examples, driving the MAX6921 looks like
voodoo to me. Can someone give me a hint/tip/example on how to get
going with this project?
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