A bag of matrix display from the past: TIL305

3 types of TIL305.

At the last edition of the local HAM flea market I got a bag of TIL305 5x7 dot matrix displays. [I got quite a lot of them, more than I can possibly use, so if you need them to repair a piece of equiment and landed on this page because of that, write me.]


A new challenge is up! There are few possibilities for driving these displays and most of them rely on equally osbolete hardware or expensive parts (like those from Maxim IC). On hackaday I located an interesting project called "tinymatrix" that uses a similar display with an interesting approach.

The display is soldered on top of a ATtiny2313/ATtiny4313 microcontroller, which handles pixel multiplexing. While the original idea has hardcoded animations, with my TIL305 I can go one step further and use the microcontroller as a matrix driver connected on a I2C/TWI bus. The "driver" can then carry onboard some symbols or receive temporary ones from the master controller.

Time to get some paper and do some preliminary work.