I've inherited an LED display board from an old callcenter
I have no information for it at all other than:
- It was made by Ferrograph
- it runs "FOAN II" firmware
- it uses RS232 but with an rj11 connector
- It seems to have a z80 processor
I've pulled it apart as I've given up with the "just plug it into serial and send shit down the cable at it" route, its got 2 panels of 9x2 arrays, each row is controlled by a set of big-ass transistor thingies. Columns are a set of shift circuits and some other IC's I cant identify.
Now wheres my damned Arduino, I have an idea for a kickass version of tetris on this thing :)
hi,did you find any software to run with this display
i've got similar led wallboard made by ferrograph and haven't got idea how write any word on it.
nope unfortunately not, i've not got very far with reverse engineering the circuitry inside either. The whole array is controlled with a set of shift registers (which I can see are controlling the columns) but I cant find whats controlling the row power.
yeee.....it's not so easy:), could you send me pic of pcb inside wallboard.
Hi there.
Same issue here. Got a ferrograph wallboard. It seems that it is connected correctly (wallboard -> rs485 -> rs485/rs232 adapter -> com port) but i did not manage to get any writings on it.
Any hint / help would be highly appreciated, probably you can give me the contact to kris who wrote the other entries. Maybe together we'r finding a way to get this thing working.
Thanks. Greetings
Trust
hi.
Check what software has got yours display, there is sticker on eprom.If it is ADC try to send to your display 0x00 it should reply with time which is in the rtc. before set the correct transmit speed on computer and display with small switch on main board .
kris
Hi Kris
Thanks for your help. The correct transmit speed (baudrate) 9600 has been set with the help of the small switches on the Led-Board. The correct baudrate is shown on the wallboard when the wallboard is in testmode. So this should be fine.
The Software mentionned on the sticker is not ADC but UDP V.1.21, therefore the test with sending the 0x00 failed...
Do you have any other hints for me? You could also contact me directly on oschti[at]oschti.ch.
Again, thank you very much for your tipps.
Oschti
Just to let you know that I have done quite a lot of reverse engineering on the Aurora 64 wallboards, and have managed to drive them successfully from a PC. From what I can gather, there are two generations; one (circa 1996) uses fibre optic interconnects between the display boards and control board, while the other (circa 2002) uses electrical interconnects. The two versions use incompatible firmware, and damage could occur if the wrong firmware is used. I think the incompatibility lies in the display boards themselves, and that the Z80 based control boards are interchangeable (though I haven't tries this).
The displays in my posession have firmware designed for call center use(FDS64AV), but I know that other variants exist. For example, I saw some Aurora 62 displays scrolling large text in various London tube stations a while ago, and I know for a fact that the FDS64AV firmware cannot do this. In fact, the FDS64AV is pretty primitive, and can only display two lines of 7 high text, with a few basic effects; it cannot display large/fancy text or graphics, though the hardware is certainly capable of this. It's very loosely based on the Adaptive Microsystems Alpha protocol, but is so limited in capability as to be incompatible with their AlphaNET software.
I've written a guide to the FDS64AV firmware and both hardware variants, including software protocols, connectivity, memory map and IO lines, so if anybody is interested in knowing more, feel free to contact me at: robertcoward (at) gmail (dot) com.
IRobert i need your information, i have sent you an email but just incase you have change accounts would you please send the info to colin (dot) cooper13 (at) three (dot) com (dot) au
thanks, and if anyone know the pinout of the RJ45 connector that comes out of the display could they please let me know (ie need to know what pin is the RS485 + - and sheild