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Windows application to show various information on graphics-capable monochrome displays.

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VFD-Studio 2

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Greetings everyone and welcome to VFD-Studio 2! This is a free and open-source project to show system information on a VFD, LCD or OLED display.

If you would like to keep an eye on CPU load and memory usage during gaming, if you are a fan of (retro) case modding or if you just appreciate to have a little fancy additional display for your computer, then you've come to the right place.

Application screenshot Graphics output on a VFD

Features

  • Displays images, animations, charts, etc.

  • Displays various system information

  • Highly configurable - includes an Editor application for creating your own screen designs

  • Intuitive user interface, including a preview-display and useful controls

Supported displays

  • Noritake Itron GU-800 VFD Series
    (tested with a GU128x64-800B)

  • Noritake Itron GU-300 VFD Series
    (tested with a GU256x64-372, identical to GU256X64F-9900)

  • Basically any display supported by the Arduino U8glib library
    (tested with SSD1309 and SSD1306 128x64 OLED displays)

How it works

The general concept is that the display is connected to an Arduino-microcontroller (source and schematics are included in this project) which communicates via USB serial connection with a computer that runs VFD-Studio. Let me show this in a premium-quality illustration:

Once all installed and wired, simply start VFD-Studio, configure the type of display, it's resolution and select the serial port.

VFD-Studio processes so-called Lists - text files which contain instructions for the display - e.g. draw an image or print some text.

A set of instructions belongs to a Screen which is displayed for a certain duration before the next Screen is displayed.

VFD-Studio let's you load Lists, skip to the next Screen or stay at the current one and even provides a dedicated Editor application with a overview on all available display commands and system information for designing your own Lists and Screens .