CuVoodoo

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The firefly conductor is a vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) driver/controller.

Main parts:

the VFD has been salvaged from a Samsung SER6540II cash register.
it came with Supertex HV518 VFD chips to drive the individual segments of the display.
I use a STM32F103 micro-controller to control the display.

setup

Here are the parts used:

STM32F1 development board, based on a STM32F103C8T6 micro-controller (32-bit ARM Cortex M3, 72MHz)
the main VFD I salvaged from a Samsung SER6540II cash register (cashier side)
the secondary VFD I salvaged from a Samsung SER6540II cash register (customer side). this one is broken though.
main power supply
adjustable boost converter to drive the VFD
level shifter to connect the 3.3V STM32 signals to the 5V HV518 pins
USB to UART converter (SiLabs CP2102 based) to communicate with the micro-controller
SWD adapter (ST-Link v2 clone) to flash the micro-controller
USB to power (providing 5V), flash (using DFU), and communicate with (using CDC ACM) the micro-controller