New Penguin Display

bee_man

Does anyone have a nice chart for the REV B penguins display? Just poking around I've found which segments light for each bit sent to the shift register. So I was able to count up to 15 in HEX, and yell HELP, or PULL. I could not find any other tech info and I don't think I can explain it very well.

- - A - -
segments           F E C B D G dp A                        F       B
data bits          7 6 5 4 3 2  1 0                        - - G - -
                                                           E       C
     $02           0 0 0 0 0 0 1  0                        - - D - -  dp
     $FD           1 1 1 1 1 1 0  1

So if you output $02 the display will show an 8, all bits on except the decimal point, send a $FD and only the decimal point is lit.

I think the REV B with the shift display and the extra I/O port is much nicer than the first Penguin. The fix was not real difficult, I have one done and one to go. I did find it easier to solder the wire to the mosfet first then hold on to the mosfet by the wire as you solder the other pins.


Edit: Two for two, Yippie!

Humanoido

Bee-man, this is great information. Thanks! I created programs that can handle the entire English alphabet, complete with tables and charts for look-up of vowels and consonants, along with some text messaging programs, in example code. As I recall, I had to make a special font set to represent all the characters in the alphabet. I need to shift gears from working on the Brain project to Penguin for a while, and then will find and post these new programs that take advantage of Penguin's new display. The new Penguin also has an entire new set of graphics characters! Exploring this, along with the new shift-register is absolutely exciting. Although recommending the shift register to Parallax was to gain another port and make the decimal alive, it has indeed opened up additional new and remarkable worlds.

Humanoido

I started posting the new Penguin B display programs.
These two handle numbers. Graphics, text and the English Alphabet will follow.
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?129802-Penguin-B-Numbers-Using-the-New-Display&p=979134#post979134

There's a new Penguin B link section here.
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?129592-Penguin-Robot&p=977061#post977061

bee_man

Thanks Humanoido thats exactly what I was looking for. Do you think it would be advantageous to put together a chart of characters and the hex code needed to display them. Or do you think it is easy enough for most programers to figure out.

Jim

Humanoido

bee_man wrote: »

Thanks Humanoido thats exactly what I was looking for. Do you think it would be advantageous to put together a chart of characters and the hex code needed to display them. Or do you think it is easy enough for most programers to figure out. Jim

Jim, we definitely need a chart when programming Penguin in English, for rapid coding and greater simplicity. Without a chart, things will become complex.

That's because Penguin requires a special font set, and then a determined relationship between the font and the 7-segment display for letter formants. There is indeed a fair amount of work in doing this.

I'm working on a new upgraded version of this program to be released soon. The chart will show the binary byte required to produce a corresponding letter. It should be easy to convert the binary byte to decimal and hex.

If you ran Penguin B Numbers program, you may have noticed it converted the binary into decimal using only one PBASIC statement. You could also add on a similar conversion for hex. I like to work back and forth between decimal, binary, and hex when writing programs to create different examples.

References
Penguin B Numbers - Using the New Display
penguinb_numbers.bpx
penguinb_numbers_continue.bpx

Humanoido

I finished a Penguin Font for all 26 letters of the English alphabet. The font will be expanded with other characters and symbols for punctuation, math and graphics, and of course it already includes numbers. I started a thread on the topic here.