Here in the old school FranLab long format I do a teardown of a thrift store find - a late 70's era home automation unit - plus I talk about my love of vacu-fluorescent displays and show a few that I have around the shop. Enjoy!
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Join Team FranLab!!!! Become a patron and help support my YouTube Channel on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/frantone
- Music by Fran Blanche -
Frantone on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/frantone/
Fran on Twitter - https://twitter.com/contourcorsets
Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html
FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com
I had a Casio VFD calculator in the early 80s that used the small 0 too.
I've read about VFD as I find them beautiful, but never find them in real life
This same technology, usually called "carrier current" or "wired wireless" is still widelly used…typically by utilities to send meter readings from a residential or business electric or maybe another utility's meter back to the utility's office for remote 'reading' for billing. Mostly the signals are LOW freq AM signals. The X10 devices can talk to other devices that are on the same utility transformer…the inductance in them prevents the signals from going upstream to the power line feeds. I have a bunch of these devices and they're great fun to play with.
Your Casio rounded Pi wrong. 😉
Does it have 24h clock??? I want one of those!!!!
I love VFD's as well!
this is from 1982
Once Nixie stock is all sold out, VFD tubes are the new Nixies.
I'm actually surprised you can still get them so cheap. Must be a crapload around that nobody wants. I have enough stocked up to make hundreds of clocks 😀
Put a scope on the line, and see what the data looks like.
I sued that company in the 70's because I was a misled that the case was genuine walnut veneer. It was the famous "Wooden Veneer Class Action" that you have heard about. After my lawsuit, they put the warning label on.
Exact same VFD in my Sanyo VTC 5000 Betacord witch i can not find anywhere mines is getting very dim now
I've got a AKIA VHS video cassette recorder model VS-F600 which one of the best vacu-fluorescent displays I've seen but sadly I think it was over driven and it's rather faint now, it was the most striking and lovely display I've seen on any consumer electronics.X10 data was encoded at 120kHz.
Pico systems were the designers of X-10, they were based in Scotland.
whatever you've done has worked. I'm seeing a lot of your videos in related 😀
Thanks, Fran. And I did enjoy it, as with all your videos. Still discovering them…
I still have mine that I bought when they were sold by Radio Shack. I originally purchased mine to control my stereo accurately so I could record NPR radio plays. I also used it to turn the coffee pot on in the morning and to turn the patio light on when it got dark so my girlfriend's dog wouldn't be in the dark at night before we got home from work. I think the coding was so you could specify which appliance or light would get controlled. I never thought of using it for security. There were several different kinds of control modules including wall light switches.