I have an IEE VFD (device # ASSY05464ASSY35119) that many years ago I had interfaced it with an Arduino Uno. It sat in my closet for years until I decided to clean out my closet. I found the display and before I canned it, I thought I would try to make it work. Unfortunately, after many days searching my hard drives for a sketch I used, it is no where to be found. So..... here I am. Looking for anyone who might have a similar display. It is a 2x20 dot matrix display. It is a 5V device with a SERIAL interface and a 20pin IDC male connector. I've attached a datasheet for a VFD that is very similar to this unit although not from the device mfg: IEE (Industrial Electronics Engineers). I've contacted them for a datasheet and when I told them it was for a hobby project, they dropped me like a hot potato. I've connected it to an UNO R3 and used the SoftwareSerial library and defined pins 4 and 5 as the rcv and xmt pins (xmt connected to the SERIAL IN pin) on the interface connector. Other pins on the interface are RESET, CHIP SELECT, Addr0, WRITE to send commands to it. Nothing seems to work. I've tried sending simple single character commands to RESET, or CLEAR... nothing.
So, this is a long shot to see if any Arduino users have experience with this display before I send it to the garbage can.
Also 3.2.3 in that manual, there is a description of a jumper pad which appears to allow selection of the baud rate and also has a self test selection which might be interesting to try.
I have an older model IEE 2 x 20 display from 1993, and am just about to start playing around with it again. Fortunately I have the original datasheets. The pinout of mine is mostly the same as the one in marteen1337's PDF file. My version supports serial in either RS-232 or TTL via pin 14. Mode is changed with a jumper named COM1: OFF = RS232, ON = TTL. Then, baud rate is set with a jumper named COM2: OFF = 1200, ON = 9600. The specs state it takes an 11-bit frame: 1 start bit, 8 data bits (the most significant bit must always be low, so only 7 bits are valid) and 2 stop bits. To test the display, apply 5VDC to pin 2, ground to pin 6, then jumper pin 10 (which is also ground) to pin 14. After three seconds, a diagnostic display cycle should begin. If you're not sure about the pin numbering, find the "1" on the PCB and the missing key pin "8". All the odd pins are on one side, even pins on the other, which is convenient because you can do serial interfacing plus power with a single-row connector on the even-numbered side.
