Factorio Forums

Made a central display board for my base to alert me when outposts, oil, etc are low. To allow easy message creation, I also made a "keyboard". Enter letters one at a time into the constant combinator and the message is converted to text on the display. These messages can then be saved to one of fifty randomly accessible memory cells.
The RAM uses a 4-combinator design that is a variant of XKnights (=1|<2) design. Green wire controls addressing. Green = 10 would write cell 10, green = -10 would read it.
This area controls input. The top combinator is for letters, the bottom two are for memory functions (left) and message color (right).
The display itself was a rather interesting experiment. It is capable of converting base 10 to binary in one game tick. However the speed comes at the cost of making it limited in the vertical dimension. Seven rows high is about the limit. As a side project I also made a 3-tick display that focuses on making it scalable to any size desired.
Here's the save if anyone wants to check it out. I don't currently have the blueprint mod running, but will furnish any blueprints upon request.

Hey, awesome work! I'm trying to get your build to work... Right now, in the upper constant combinator I'm putting in the letters I want (obviously wrong since you have to enter letters one at a time), then using "2" to save to memory two and then "-2" to read it, but alas no luck. I'm positive I'm missing something, so I was hoping you could help!

Are you using the bottom left combinator in the input area for the memory functions?
1) Enter letters in the top one at a time.
2) Enter heavy oil = 1 or lube = 1 in the bottom right if you want to change the color of the message.
3) Enter positive green signal in the bottom left combinator to save the message.
4) Turn off the address combinator, then turn off the input combinator. Your message should now be saved.

If you turn off the data input before turning off the address you will write the now empty data line to the memory over your message.