I picked up an old Kenwood DVF-3060 DVD player and decided to reverse engineer the front panel for a future project. The panel features a fancy vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) and some buttons, all controlled through a PT6311 (or UPD16311) IC. This repo contains the C++ driver I wrote for a Cortex-M based TI eval board (TM4C123G LaunchPad) to communicate with the controller via SPI.
- Set and clear characters in up to 10 positions
- Complete ASCII font (14 segments are quite limiting though)
- Set and clear icons
- Poll key states
- Layered architecture for easy porting to other hardware
More PT6311 features (display modes, dimming, LEDs, switches, etc.) are implemented by the controller layer (see pt6311.h), but not used for the DVF-3060 front panel.
The project runs out of the box with PlatformIO and comes with a timer example.
The pinout is configured as follows (make sure your board supports 5V logic levels!):
| TM4C123 | PT6311 / front panel board | Function |
|---|---|---|
| PA3 | 3. VFD_STB | SSI0 SS |
| PA4 | 4. VFD_DATA_OUT | SSI0 MISO |
| PA5 | 5. VFD_DATA_IN | SSI0 MOSI |
| PA2 | 6. VFD_CLK | SSI0 CLK |
| GND | 7. GND | GND |
// include and create instance
#include "dvf3060.h"
DVF3060 dvf3060;
// init display (also controller and HAL)
dvf3060.init();
// clear display
dvf3060.clearDisplay();
// set and clear a character (position 0-9)
dvf3060.setChar('A', 4);
dvf3060.clearChar(4);
// set and clear an icon (see dvf3060_font.h for available icons)
dvf3060.setIcon(DVF3060_ICON::HOUR);
dvf3060.clearIcon(DVF3060_ICON::HOUR);
// poll key state (see dvf3060.h for available keys)
if (dvf3060.getKeyState() & DVF3060_KEY_PLAY) {/* ... */}
// see main.cpp for a complete example
There are several abstraction layers that allow you to easily port the driver to a new platform or similar display configurations.
- HAL (hardware abstraction layer): Contains platform-specific code to make upper layers work regardless of the underlying platform (TM4C123 in my case). To port this driver to a new platform (e.g., Arduino or RP2040), implement the required methods (see tm4c.h as a reference).
- Controller layer: Implements the SPI protocol as specified in the IC datasheet by using the HAL methods. For use with the DVF-3060 front panel, only PT6311 is relevant, but related controllers like the PT6312 can be supported in a similar fashion.
- Display layer: This is the frontend part of the driver which allows simplified control over characters and icons. It is based on the controller layer and comes with a predefined ASCII font.
- Some inspiration for the ASCII font: LED-Segment-ASCII
- More inspiration for the ASCII font: The Super VMW CPU Meter
- Arduino library for the PT6312 controller: PT6312_VFD_Arduino_Library
- PT6311 datasheet: Google
- UPD16311 datasheet: Google
- DVF-3060 service manual: Google
If I'm super motivated, I might create some videos about the reverse engineering process, because you don't really need a datasheet to figure out how the controller works.
There's also an IR receiver on the front panel board, but I haven't looked into it yet (and I also don't have the remote control anymore).
This project is released under the MIT License.
