Project Radar Boards Schiphol Control
We got a [pile of Control Tower displays from Schiphol airport (or Eurocontrol, etc)] used for tracking what is in the air.
They are basically small 2-3 CPU boards on a common RS 485 bus or on RS 232. One CPU is purely for programming. The other is the main board and handles the traffic on the bus (it may be ASTERIX format?) and the other handles the display. They are interconnected by a TTL serial on 9600 8N1. Each box also contains a high quality PSU.
The programming chip is also 9600 8N1 and contains some debugging tooling. Photo below shows the testpoints used for programming.
But easiest may be to use normal ATMEL programmeing on MISO/MOSI - which are nicely broken out on the connector.
Code
Some fairly functional code: https://github.com/MakerSpaceLeiden/AirtrafficControlDisplaysSchiphol
Bestand:Schiphol-first-light.mov
grote (50229) display eerste test-tekst (youtube)
Schiphol Airtraffic Control displays
Om een van de hierboven ge-"transclude"d pagina's te wijzigen, bezoek de pagina via Categorie:DisplayBoardsSchiphol.
Datasheet displays
50228 and 50229 use PD44x (PD4435, red) displays. 50.028 and 50219 use DLO3416 (red). 50227 uses DLO1414 (smaller 4-digit display, red). 7003-assy uses PD2573 (green).
Code in https://github.com/MakerSpaceLeiden/AirtrafficControlDisplaysSchiphol/blob/main/shared/pd44.c
Various people hack them