20×2 Character VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display) – SPI interface [20T202DA2JA] Cheap Outlet Locations

One up your plain old character LCD with a gorgeous VFD! These displays look and act just like character LCDs but are way glowier, and are very readable even from a distance. As a bonus, you only need 3 digital pins to control it as it is a SPI/serial interface not parallel.

We have a datasheet for the module and the datasheet for the controller chip (with much more detail in case you need it)

These are often used at point of sale machines (at the checkout counter) so that’s where you can go take a look to see what they appear like in person.

We don’t have a detailed up tutorial yet but we have do have an Arduino library that works great and has a bunch of examples showing how to do everything from print messages, to scrolling, to making custom characters. Any normal character LCD code can be adapted to this display by turning the parallel interface into a serial interface (check the datasheet for how the data is stored and transmitted)