15-Segment FV865ND VFD controlled by HT16515

FV865ND is a VFD panel manufactured by Futaba Corporation. It is designed to be used in DVD players or set-top-boxes. It can display 8 characters and it has a lot of symbols. I found it in a DVB-S2 receiver (Comag SL100HD) where it was controlled by HT16515 IC. Fortunately, the front panel of this receiver contains everything needed to power the VFD (the power is supplied via a 5V line and it is converted to filament and VFD voltage by a small transformer).

I couldn't find any software for HT16515 but its datasheet is available. The IC is 3.3V and 5V compatible and the nice thing is that the panel connector has different pins for IC supply and VFD transformer. The IC supports key scan too and the front panel makes use of only 7 keys (maximum 32). Data is sent/received via serial interface, SPI like.

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