HIC Hero Panel VALVO Display Research/Theory

[mugatu]

Just starting this off for Fusion and feide so as to not clog up and hijack kurtyboy‘s awesome HIC Panel thread: My Han in Carbonite panel upgrades 23 Nov 2013

Here are the Valvo/(later)Philips ZM-1500 Series diagrams I have previously collected:

ZM-1500 SERIES Gas Displays

ZM-1550
Characteristics

Pinout Diagram

Zm-1551
Characteristics

Pinout Diagram

 

[mugatu]

Fusion I’m extremely interested in any progress you make towards these ZM1550/ZM1551 gas displays for the Hero Panel.

 

[Fusion]

I'm actually planning to re-engage on that project. Those displays appear to be tiny little DC glow discharge tubes. The physics is very interesting. But it does mean they could be damaged if the plasma discharge causing the glow is allowed to go into arc mode. That may be a root cause for the reliability issues you might have heard about.

If anyone has documented the lighting sequence, please let me know. I tried, some item ago, to do this while watching the movies on my crappy consumer-grade DVD/Blue-Ray player. I noted that the vertical segments for the full digit display seemed to be unused, and that's about all. I think it likely that we are only seeing a subset of the full sequence in the theatrical movie. So, if there is additional footage out there that shows the entire pattern sequence, that would be very useful.

 

[mugatu]

Perhaps Warpcell (or any other Hero Panel lighting experts) would be wiling to help us out (even privately) with this endeavor?

 

[modeljag]

I'm actually planning to re-engage on that project. Those displays appear to be tiny little DC glow discharge tubes. The physics is very interesting. But it does mean they could be damaged if the plasma discharge causing the glow is allowed to go into arc mode. That may be a root cause for the reliability issues you might have heard about.

If anyone has documented the lighting sequence, please let me know. I tried, some item ago, to do this while watching the movies on my crappy consumer-grade DVD/Blue-Ray player. I noted that the vertical segments for the full digit display seemed to be unused, and that's about all. I think it likely that we are only seeing a subset of the full sequence in the theatrical movie. So, if there is additional footage out there that shows the entire pattern sequence, that would be very useful.

I have the slow ESB "stasis" and fast ROTJ "unfreeze" sequences documented with frame by frame screenshots of these scenes that I programmed into my HIC lighting kit (which uses LED segment displays and runs on 5V). Shoot me your email and I can send you the sequence info. Both of these sequences have a repeating pattern throughout the scenes so they are fully captured.

 

[Fusion]

Thanks! E-mail away, I think. I guess the new Conversation feature takes the place of the old PM thing?

If there are two pattern speeds, that is a complication I hadn’t thought of. Not a big deal, but it’ll be less-minimalist that I was originally thinking might have been possible.