1202 ALARM

Upcycled VFD Display Counter Test (Arduino) (YouTube video)  All parts are recycled or recovered from obsolete electronics, with the exception of the Arduino board.  The VFD is being driven by 2 ULN2308 transistor arrays via 10K pull-up resistors to 12volts. There are a total of 16 lines, 6 for digits and 10 for segments. Normally the VFD elements are held high (ON) , but switching a ULN2308 transistor ON pulls the line to GND and turns the VFD segment (or digit) OFF, so inverted logic.  The 2volts for the VFD filament is coming from the Arduino 5volt line via a 10R resistor. The code is based on the Arduino SevenSeg library but I will be writing my own code with interrupt-driven multiplexing for the VFD digits.

We recently upgraded to a new (to us) Nissan Leaf after over 4 years of successful and ridiculously cheap motoring in our first one. The second generation Leaf uses a Type 2 AC connector at the car end whereas the first generation used Type 1, which is now basically obsolete. New cables are £100+ so I decided to convert our existing cable instead. I had bought this from a mate for £50 because at the time Nissan didn't actually supply a charging cable, expecting home and street chargers to have a tethered cable. Some do, most don't. Anyway, when we traded our old Leaf in, I kept the cable. The dismantled Type 1 connector is shown above, ready for sale as spares on eBay to recoup some of the cost of the upgrade.  A new Type 2 plug cost £35 delivered via AliExpress and arrived in about 10 days. It was complete with the necessary 220ohm resistor which is connected between the PP pin and the PE earth pin to tell the car the plug is in and to draw up to 22kw from the char...