Yeah, I can understand that its not a cheap stuff because it outputs a very professional grade display like something we could see in a costlier PA systems and all, but I thought there is a possibility of a single chip IC with LED driver/peak hold for that -not much popular though.
At first I thought it could be a PIC micro stuff with programmed output.
However, do anybody think that AN6870N is the engine here(I think it used in old electronics FL displays)..could be an obsolete chip
Could be possible with Sanyo LB1412 also, but I don't think that is the stuff used here.
My search didn't return anything else. Dr peppers, I like that Nixie display!
Older pa equipment used lm3914's, the last led (high end) can be connected to the dot/bar mode pin, so that when the display goes right to the end it goes to dot mode, showing that the display is off the scale.
You could use 2 lm3914's, good idea, it would not look like the video however, in the vid the peak led stays on for a second then resets, 2 lm3914s would give 2 simultaneous displays, one a bar and the other a dot, the dot would go up to the peak signal level then creep back down instead of resetting, you'd filter the bar with a faster response and the dot with a very slow one.
Yeah, I understood using the two LM3914/15 in parallel mode, but I doubt with the hold/creep down 'dot' mode operation because, the 'hold' should stay for a second or so and the 'creep down' should be very fast, don't think this double configuration is possible with a single LM3914/15. The 'bar' mode should work fine anyway.
Means if the peak holds for a second, then the each downward creeping LED's will take the same 1 sec.
I've never done a vu, but I did write some code to display the lamba signal from a exahust gas sensor and I had a vertical rather than horizontal bargraph so that I could show a trend, it worked in the end but I remember having trouble getting the custom character generator to work in the display.
Theres some nice examples where peeps have done this sort of thing with a glcd, never used one of those yet.
I have done bargraphs on character LDCs (16x4 or 16x2). In horizontal mode I made 128 position meters. Using 8 custom characters.
I am playing with GLCDs. Some take each byte as 8 dots vertically. If you want 8 dots horizontally then there is much software overhead.
Some GLCDs use one byte/ pixel. Some use 3 bytes / pixel. Some use 1.5 bytes / pixel. The last example in post #16 requires about 100 bytes to update the meter.