Just order a few of these to play around with. Looked like any easy interface display for microcontrollers. Thinking about a keychain scrolling message board or something, 4 digits/4 letter words... Anyway, thought they were interesting, figured I'd share what I found. Included the data sheet, but haven't shopped around yet to see if there are any circuits or better prices.
I was just thumbing through the Digikey print catalog, and oh my god, the 4 digit module (half of what I bought), sells for $18.67 (Digikey part # 516-1160-5-ND, pg 2209, may-aug 2007). Of course there is some chance these used-surplus modules aren't as good as new, but never had that problem with Allelectronics.
It's odd I haven't found any projects on the web using them, kind of an old part. Perhaps the price and small charactor size.
The DLG2416 is really old, just like the TIL311 you can still buy em but why?
Any charater based LCD display can do much more for much less, although LEDs are cool though. Just wait till OLED is cheap and long lasting, goodbye LCDs.
For the price, I thought they were very cool. Pretty sure the first project will be a keychain size scrolling message. Only bummer is no code examples, and the data sheet doesn't give much detail on how to chain them. Best I can figure, I'll need 2 I/O pins per 4 character module, to write to the correct digit, everything else in wired in parallel. Two modules should be good enough, figure about 2 inches long, maybe an inch high. Couple of 3 volt lithium button cells ought to keep it powered for a while.
I think LED displays give a very cool look to some projects, too. A while back, I wanted to get some surplus monolithic displays (you know, the kind with bubble magnifying lenses) just play around with. Turns out the company wanted to charge me $45US in shipping and additional fees to send my order from Montreal to me here in Illinois, USA, basically because I don't live in Canada. My order was for about $20US in parts. I expect they still have the parts, that order was cancelled.
Jeff