The family loves your place. We're thinking of heading back out to catch
the Strasburg RR and then your place sometime this summer.
Although all of the previous methods are much better than going with
the 63 switch solution, especially for cost consideration, your original
thoughts have their own elegance. If you arrange your switches
(preferably some sort of toggle, 1 for each segment) in the same layout
as the display(s) (3x7 across, 3 down), you have an instant read on what
prices are set.
But wow! 64 wires (minimum) for a tiny little sign. That's a lot.
There are the serial-LCD "backpack" solutions that connect an LCD alphanumeric or LED numeric display to a serial port so you can send text from a computer and have it displayed. As far as I know, none of them are non-volatile, so when power goes off, the display must be reinitialized. Or you need to run them from batteries. I didn't suggest this because in the quanties the poster needed, it would be pricy: the serial LCDs start at about $20 and go up from there.
I finished the sign. Here are some pics. Thanks to all, I went the switch route for now. I'm probably going to build the BCD encoder switch to 7 Seg decoder in the future for ease of changing the sign.
I hope the images turn out okay. The project was a lot of fun but time consuming. There are a lot of little wires that had to be stuffed inside the sign.
The bottom picture is the finished sign on the display. By just changing the dip switches, my gas prices are current.[/img]
