From reading the specifications for the protocol it looks like the display is semi intelligent and is made specifically for their MP3 player. It's not a proper bitmap display, there are limitations on what you can display. You tell it pretty much what text and preset icons to display.

You could reprogram the display to allow full control but it would involve developing your own firmware for it.

If this was interfaced with the empeg then it wouldn't mirror what is shown on the real empeg display. But if you're okay with it just displaying the basic information then I don't see any problem with implementing this.

We're pretty much stuck with the 3 shades we've currently got. It's a limitation of the VFD used. I think somebody tried a few of the other shades and found there was one more that worked okay.

- Trevor