Tall Led

Tall Led

LED Light Sign?

I have just come into ownership of one of those 4 foot tall tri colored LED light signs. It has two serial connectors, one in, one out. Can I make this work some way? Software wise? Maybe even after a little soldering?

The connectors are probably serial connectors, but you might want to check the voltages on a few pins to be sure, as sometimes TTL voltages (0 and +5 volts) are used for proprietary interfaces. Check the RXD and DSR pins relative to the GND pin and see if you see somewhere between +5 and +15 or between -5 and -15. Either way, it's probably RS232 serial. If so, you could connect it to a computer serial port, run a terminal program (hyperterm, teraterm, etc.), and hit the enter key a few times. If you get garbled characters back, try changing the baud rate, start bits, parity, and stop bits settings of the terminal program. I'd try 9600, 8, N, 1 as the initial baud rate, start bits, parity, stop bits. If that doesn't work, try backing off the baud rate to 4800, then 2400, then 1200. If you're lucky, you'll see some kind of menu sent from the sign to your terminal program through the serial link, and you can reconfigure the sign through the menu options. If not, you'll have to try to figure out the manufacturer and model number and get more info or try to do some reverse engineering. Good luck!

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