I work in maintenance for a rural basketball stadium. We are in the process of refurbishing an old show court and are looking to replace an obsolete thirty year old electronic scoreboard.
I have some rather rusty hobbyist skills and I figure I can save a fair bit of cash for diversion to other pressing projects if we can do it ourselves.
For maximum flexibility and expandability I would like to implement a one chip, simple (cheap) as possible serial reciever (RS232 protocol) that receives a 2 byte packet of the form:
1XXXXXXX 0XXXXXXX
(-ve/+ve logic (or mixed) whatever's easiest, encoding in transmitter can compensate if necessary.)
The first byte is an address, the second data to directly drive a buffered seven segment display.
Once upon a time I was a bit of a hobbyist, and can figure out what I want in discrete bits. (But prices and soldering that many joints (on top of building the displays) don't fill me with joy).
Essentially, first I would like to know, is there a cheap (roughly $10) gate array (of whatever variety) which can be configured to do what I want? Or some other way to achieve the same result in a similar price range? And using a minimum of external components.
Second. If anyone would be so charitable, could they assist me with designing such a device?
Google gives me plenty of choices but "digital stupidity" doesn't appear to be an option unless I'm willing to resort to my old TTL & CMOS Data Books and take a complexity hit that defeats the purpose of the exercise.
The block diagram below is approximately what I think I want. Sorry for my "shorthand" but I haven't done any design for years and I'm making up what I don't remember. Hopefully my meaning comes across.
Thanks in advance for any help anyone might be able to give me.
I have some rather rusty hobbyist skills and I figure I can save a fair bit of cash for diversion to other pressing projects if we can do it ourselves.
For maximum flexibility and expandability I would like to implement a one chip, simple (cheap) as possible serial reciever (RS232 protocol) that receives a 2 byte packet of the form:
1XXXXXXX 0XXXXXXX
(-ve/+ve logic (or mixed) whatever's easiest, encoding in transmitter can compensate if necessary.)
The first byte is an address, the second data to directly drive a buffered seven segment display.
Once upon a time I was a bit of a hobbyist, and can figure out what I want in discrete bits. (But prices and soldering that many joints (on top of building the displays) don't fill me with joy).
Essentially, first I would like to know, is there a cheap (roughly $10) gate array (of whatever variety) which can be configured to do what I want? Or some other way to achieve the same result in a similar price range? And using a minimum of external components.
Second. If anyone would be so charitable, could they assist me with designing such a device?
Google gives me plenty of choices but "digital stupidity" doesn't appear to be an option unless I'm willing to resort to my old TTL & CMOS Data Books and take a complexity hit that defeats the purpose of the exercise.
The block diagram below is approximately what I think I want. Sorry for my "shorthand" but I haven't done any design for years and I'm making up what I don't remember. Hopefully my meaning comes across.
Thanks in advance for any help anyone might be able to give me.
