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You have memories with VFD's? This was on my mind for decades

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BioCybergoth
Posts: 4
Joined: January 14th, 2018, 7:13 pm

You have memories with VFD's? This was on my mind for decades

Post by BioCybergoth »

Hello everyone, I'll go straight to the point in this post.

VFD stands for Vacuum Fluorescent Display, those are the screens for some old home audio systems done by many brands, but the ones that inspired this post, are the ones designed by Sony in some of their MHC, LBT and GRX series.

This is how a regular VFD look like:
Image
I want a special image-based skin for music visualizers but the ones that i wanted don't exist or they aren't good looking to most people, so i decided to make them myself, those are iconic and very memorable to some of you, even if they are bizarre, you are welcome to give critique to them so i can improve the quality and all.

I'm a big fan of some VFD screen spectrum analyzer design done by Sony, those look very ahead of the time and the smoothness of the rendering is quite beautiful and interesting to see once again to me, but I've found some designs very poorly done and almost misusing assets.

If those already exists for Rainmeter and someone created them, let me know, i don't want to steal or ripoff someone's work with mine.

here's some images of the ones that I'm working on, i have the fonts and all but i need some advice and help to get them working properly and without problems.

And this is how the VFD's made by Sony on many sound systems look like:

Warning: Please ignore the music on some of the videos, just pay attention to the screen and the movement of the spectrum analyser, try not to view the videos in lower quality or the fps will suck.

MHC-GR7/8/8000/W550
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNY3BDGVYbw

LBT-XB5/6/8AV/66/660/66K/D690/80AV/88AV/88AVK/G5500
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCw-dbcwiWI

MHC-DX3/5/7/8/9/90
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0ZkYPBtSrk

some videos won't tell you that the screen is very close to 60fps, specially the DX90 screen, that look very soft in terms of refresh rate, a high point for Sony in those systems, that's what i want to make here and do something good with my time.

Why so many variations on the models? those are the ones with them, they weren't the best audio systems but their VFD look very nice to me and many others in my country share the same feeling.

Personally i like to see them on Rainmeter and in quite big size, starting from 1920x1080 because that's the native resolution of my screen and almost every music visualizer does not have a size bigger than 720p and they look medium size to me and i want to make something of big size that can be used as tech decoration for the most obsessed geeks like me, since every Hi-Fi audio system has no animated VFD whatsoever and if they create a working deck, they look so boring and dull to the point it's not worth the purchase even if they are just cosmetic addons to your sound setup.

I actually have some "salvaged" versions of these VFD's ready for use on rainmeter but i don't know how to assign each frequency and smooth yet very fast movement you that just saw on the links for each system, i want them to be used on separate monitors, huge screens with entertainment purposes and make the graphic analyser unique and very smooth too, like the original systems.

If someone can help me making these still images alive, I'll be very happy to release more designs to give even more life to your music with these curious yet very old VFD creations, this is for me and everyone who think the same and has Rainmeter but the actual visualizers look kind of boring and repetitive, this is more a nostalgia work rather than anything and i need to make them look gorgeous and available for anyone who wants to have a different animation for their music.

This is my first attempt of making them work as intended and my first post, I'm a baby in terms of coding and creating skins but it's never late to learn new things, I'll appreciate any help!

Thank you for your time and accept my apologies for my very bad english, I'm latin and people here don't want to learn the easiest language in the world! (I'm talking about chile)
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balala
Rainmeter Sage
Posts: 16109
Joined: October 11th, 2010, 6:27 pm
Location: Gheorgheni, Romania

Re: You have memories with VFD's? This was on my mind for decades

Post by balala »

BioCybergoth wrote:Personally i like to see them on Rainmeter and in quite big size, starting from 1920x1080 because that's the native resolution of my screen and almost every music visualizer does not have a size bigger than 720p and they look medium size to me and i want to make something of big size that can be used as tech decoration for the most obsessed geeks like me, since every Hi-Fi audio system has no animated VFD whatsoever and if they create a working deck, they look so boring and dull to the point it's not worth the purchase even if they are just cosmetic addons to your sound setup.
A such large music visualizer skin would load too much the CPU, even if that's a quite fast one, not talking about an older (or weaker) CPU. Music visualizer skins are well know for being very "hungry".
Anyway, maybe it worth a try, then we'll see what can we do. Where should we start?
BioCybergoth
Posts: 4
Joined: January 14th, 2018, 7:13 pm

Re: You have memories with VFD's? This was on my mind for decades

Post by BioCybergoth »

Yeah, it's true, they tend be very unfriendly with CPU and RAM usage, but since this is an image based idea, it will be nice to see it working even at a "barebones" state, btw, i forgot to upload the images of the GR8 VFD:

HCD-GR8
Image
Part. No. 1-517-618-11
just barebones WIP for now, but i almost finished it, the same white pixels are the area for text in the real unit...
This is going to be the easiest one to make since all the bars are 100% vertical

My problem is with the HCD-XB66 VFD, that have some variations on the design and the bars are not 100% vertical, they have an angle or maybe i'm just drowning on a glass of water.

HCD-XB66
Image
Part. No. 1-517-617-11

BTW, my connection is at a very insufferable 40 kb/s and i already complain about that dreadful speed.

I was thinking of reusing the base design of the example level meter or the spectrum for each frequency so they look more faster in movement.

My skin idea may suck a lot but it's still an idea for a new skin only for music visualization.
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balala
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Posts: 16109
Joined: October 11th, 2010, 6:27 pm
Location: Gheorgheni, Romania

Re: You have memories with VFD's? This was on my mind for decades

Post by balala »

BioCybergoth wrote:My problem is with the HCD-XB66 VFD, that have some variations on the design and the bars are not 100% vertical, they have an angle or maybe i'm just drowning on a glass of water.
If the bars are or aren't vertical, doesn't matter too much, I think.
Probably you should have to extract first the distinct elements of the image. I mean each white (and not just) rectangle and save them with transparent background (the place where the black background and the other white or colored rectangles are, should have to be transparent). I'm not undertaking such a thing, because I don't work currently with graphics.
BioCybergoth
Posts: 4
Joined: January 14th, 2018, 7:13 pm

Re: You have memories with VFD's? This was on my mind for decades

Post by BioCybergoth »

I'm doing all this myself, that meter would be a start point for getting the pixel position and exact frequency for the detail in the movement, i never said "do the graphics for me" man, i just want some advice and a little help to make this a skin and not a dead project.

I talk about the XB66 VFD design because, the bars there are not normal in terms of how the rectangles are presented, i complain about it just for the tiny detail of the lines themselves, i hope those don't make me go mad and finish trashing that WIP, that would suck.
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balala
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Posts: 16109
Joined: October 11th, 2010, 6:27 pm
Location: Gheorgheni, Romania

Re: You have memories with VFD's? This was on my mind for decades

Post by balala »

BioCybergoth wrote:I'm doing all this myself, that meter would be a start point for getting the pixel position and exact frequency for the detail in the movement, i never said "do the graphics for me" man, i just want some advice and a little help to make this a skin and not a dead project.
Ok, if you succeeded, please upload them.
Bekarfel
Posts: 217
Joined: May 16th, 2012, 5:38 am

Re: You have memories with VFD's? This was on my mind for decades

Post by Bekarfel »

Here's a skin I made that has pretty good meter movement I think. You can see how I've implemented AudioLevel, and you can see the image layouts I use for the LED segments

You will need to adapt it to your own requirements, but following the documentation for AudioLevel should be possible to modify to fit your own VFDs.
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BioCybergoth
Posts: 4
Joined: January 14th, 2018, 7:13 pm

Re: You have memories with VFD's? This was on my mind for decades

Post by BioCybergoth »

Bekarfel wrote:Here's a skin I made that has pretty good meter movement I think. You can see how I've implemented AudioLevel, and you can see the image layouts I use for the LED segments

You will need to adapt it to your own requirements, but following the documentation for AudioLevel should be possible to modify to fit your own VFDs.
Thank you very much, I'm looking this one and play around with it to try and make my idea working and keep it CPU friendly as possible, if this uses way too much power just for the smooth movement at 60fps, this is the goal without CPU load at all, sorry by not posting anything recently.
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