Information on interface to Mobitec LED signs

[Felix Schulthess]

Hi there,

I am a member of the Hackerspace in Zürich [1], Switzerland and we got
our hands on a Mobitec CF191601 LED display. You guys seem to have done
quite some reverse engineering of these displays. Could you share this
information with us?

In particular, we are curious about how the RS-485 interface works. What
commands are available? Do you have official documentation on them? Did
you reverse engineer the functionality in [2]?

We already managed to operate a Mobitec flipdot display via the
interface on the 26-pin ribbon cable. The LED display has the same
cable, internally. Are you aware of any similarities between the
interface of the flipdots and the LED display?

I took quite some pictures of the display today. Once I managed to
upload them, I will share the link with you.

I would be glad to hear from you!

Cheers and greetings from Zürich, Felix

[1] https://ccczh.ch
[2] https://github.com/duffrohde/mobitec-rs485/blob/master/skilt.c

[m...@zennet.dk]

Hi Felix

I am not entirely sure, but at some point one of our members designed a custom controller for the flipdot display.

https://github.com/openspaceaarhus/flipdot

/Robin

[Asbjørn Tølbøl Brask]

Hi,

Perhaps I can shed a bit more light on this.

Originally, we just received the display without any documentation whatsoever. But at some point before the custom controller was designed, one of our members/hangarounds (was it Esben?) actually got some documentation for the protocol on the built-in RS-485 interface. Unfortunately, I have no idea where that document is now... However, the code you have linked on GitHub was written by another member who took part in the reverse engineering effort back then. If the RS-485 interface is indeed the same in your LED display, then that code should be enough to get you started. I can't remember if there are any other commands...

/Asbjørn

[Felix Schulthess]

Hi Robin and Asbjørn,

thanks for the reply! In that case, I will get back to good
old-fashioned reverse engineering. If the mentioned document still
exists and if you find it, I would be glad if you could send it to me.

If you are interested, I will share my findings.

Cheers, Felix

> <https://github.com/duffrohde/mobitec-rs485/blob/master/skilt.c>
>