[aprssig] (OT) HC4LED Lives Again

[Brian B. Riley]

Hey ...does  anyone remember the famous (infamous???) HC4LED units??? Well, they are back ... at least for a little while

Terry Hitt of Hitt Consulting (the "HC" in "HC4LED")  bought them off eBay salvaged from a cable TV set top box. Nobody knew what to do with them and they were sold off by the pound.

The unit has four seven segment LED displays and an SPI chip on board. It requires only a simple SHIFTOUT command with two I/O lines (Data and Clock) and optionally a third line to enable/disable (alternately it can simply be grounded). It became a big hit. Pretty soon there was code for Parallax BS1, BS2, SXB, and Propeller, Picaxe, various PICs (ASM and BAS), AVRs, Arduino, etc. Sparkfun got ahold of some and they began selling them as well is Hitt Consulting.

And then the well ran dry. If you look about the net you will find any number of HC4LED web pages pointing to the "no longer in stock" webpage at Sparkfun as well as the no longer registered www.hc4led.com some of them loudly lamenting the absence of this neat little unit. Well ... lament no more! Terry found a carton with a little under 200 more of these units. We made a deal and they are now for sale here, while they last.

 <www.wulfden.org/TheShoppe/HC4LED/index.shtml>

I want to spread them around, so no bulk sales. For now I will sell up to three units per order. The webpage has a link to the newly updated docs and to an open file download directory for every piece of HC4LED code I could get my hands on (BS1/PROP1, BS2, SXB, Propeller, PIC asm and basic, Picaxe, Arduino, etc

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cheers ... brian riley, n1bq, underhill center, vermont
The Shoppe at Wulfden
www.wulfden.org/TheShoppe/