Scott Danesi

I have had a couple people ask me about using the Total Nuclear Annihilation Numeric Score Displays in their homebrew games. Now that Pinball Life has these display assemblies in stock, I figured I would do a little tutorial on how to use these. The display assembly has a 3 pin 0.156 header on the back. This is the main power input for the display. You will need to look at the silkscreen on this header and make a connector that supplies a solid ground and a solid +5vdc. Just make sure it is plugged in the correct orientation. On the back of the display assembly, you will find a pre-programmed Arduino Nano ready for you to send it some instructions. This Arduino will not power up with the main power input and will need to be plugged into an active USB port to come alive. This is a Mini USB connection. Make sure when plugging this in, you use the included strain relief located by the main power input header. Now into the more fun stuff. The display assembly needs to be sent some serial data from the USB to the Arduino in order to display stuff. I am going to provide some Python samples, but honestly all that is happening here is the PC is just sending the display a line of text. The Arduino will parse it, do all the heavy lifting, and display the numbers on the LED displays! The Arduino is looking for a text string in the following format. A: A is the mode of the display. This can indicate whether you want the score to flash, not flash, clear the data, or flash a match (last 2 char flashing). B: B is the number of the display. This value will be between 1 and 4. This is so you can address the correct display when sending score data. C: C is the actual score! This is a numeric value between 0 and 99999999. Do not put commas here, the Arduino will handle that. \n: This is the terminating character so the Arduino knows it got a complete line of code. In this example, the first display will receive a flashing on 100,000. This example will display 200,000 solidly on display number 2. This example will completely ...