I repair old timing equipment (think Race America, JACircuits, etc) as a side hobby, and a lot of it is large 7 segment displays with individual LEDs in series for each segment.
I am so glad people didn't try using an LCD display or similar, I'd never be able to fix them when the pixels/display panels go bad and the original manufacturer is long out of business. LEDs, shift registers, mosfets... all serviceable.
Users fixing things make the stock market sad. Better to force them to spend hundreds on a new thing then chuck the old one in the garbage even though it's 99% functioning.
Unfortunately some motorsport event organizers barely break even, especially post-covid in CA, although it is picking up slightly this year. It is hard for them to justify $2-4k for a new display or timing system, whereas it's a few hours of work for me to do most repairs.
LCD is doable, it would just take you more time and research to come up with stable cheap solution. LCD are driven by AC at rather pedestrian frequencies, nothing an RP2040 (rp pico) couldnt handle.
Yeah you could do it. I'm sure I will at some point be replacing the guts in some devices with STM32s or RP2040 as you said. Or beef it up with ESP32 :)
but if the display itself is damaged, that's tough, pretty much just reuse the case at that point I bet.
I meant use rp2040 to tap into raw signals meant for glass LCD in devices using microcontrollers with integrated LCD driver. Interpret and redraw into new framebuffer, spew out to modern LCD/OLED/VGA/hdmi.
Replace old custom unobtanium cracked LCD with modern LCD/OLED.
oh yeah, that's also a good idea! If they're using the software I sell to organizers it supports regular old computer display out, too, so you could just replace the display board and use HDMI directly these days.
I am so glad people didn't try using an LCD display or similar, I'd never be able to fix them when the pixels/display panels go bad and the original manufacturer is long out of business. LEDs, shift registers, mosfets... all serviceable.