VFD pinout required

[petehand]

Does anyone have the pinout for the Noritake Itron DC209-H2 glass? It's a 20 character dot matrix VFD. There are plenty of pictures online but no trace of a data sheet.

[Audrey]

VFD pinouts are easy to reverse engineer, find the cathode pins by checking for ones with continuity (usually the ones at the other edges), you can find the heater voltage by using a buck converter and raising the voltage to a bit under where it starts to visibly glow at all,  then map out the anodes and grids with 12v or so, usually displays like with that one with lots of characters are muxed at a higher voltage in operation

On Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 7:34 PM petehand <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:

Does anyone have the pinout for the Noritake Itron DC209-H2 glass? It's a 20 character dot matrix VFD. There are plenty of pictures online but no trace of a data sheet.

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[Audrey]

Accidentally sent before proofreading 😶

VFD pinouts are easy to reverse engineer, find the cathode pins by checking for ones with continuity (usually the ones at the outer edges), you can find the heater voltage by using a buck converter and raising the voltage to a bit under where it starts to visibly glow, then map out the anodes and grids with 12v or so, usually displays like with that one with lots of characters are muxed at a higher voltage in operation.

[petehand]

Ok never mind, it's on the back of the glass.

[petehand]

Since an extensive search of the web failed to turn up any actual information about this display, I'll post my own findings here. The heater voltage is 5V. Reasonable brightness requires an anode/grid voltage of 30-35V. Here's the pinout and footprint. Pins numbered from bottom left ACW to top left, like a conventional IC.

[petehand]

I inadvertently posted the wrong schematic yesterday. Here is the right one.

Grids 1-20 numbered left to right. Anodes numbered 1 to 5, 6 to 10 etc, left to right across, top to bottom.