{"id":12815,"date":"2016-04-05T21:20:26","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T01:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=12815"},"modified":"2026-03-02T14:53:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T19:53:29","slug":"work-in-progress-sayso-globord-audio-decoding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/05\/work-in-progress-sayso-globord-audio-decoding\/","title":{"rendered":"Sayso Globord software archive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Update to the Update (2026)<\/strong>: Forest City Surplus in London, Ontario still has them (as of 1st March 2026) in stock at $5: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fcsurplus.ca\/shopping\/products\/467215-led-message-boards\/\">Sayso Mini Scrolling LED Message Boards, Digital Business Signs<\/a>. I scored a few, and may actually finish this someday &#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: <em><s>I thought I&#8217;d work out this audio format some day. I haven&#8217;t yet, and since I no longer have the hardware, likely never will.<\/s><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You <em>may<\/em> still be able to get Sayso Globord programmable LED signs in surplus stores. It\u2019s a 7\u00d724 LED scrolling sign that you can program with a lightpen or with audio input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayso-001.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12816\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"797\" height=\"1003\" src=\"http:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayso-001.jpg\" alt=\"sayso-001\" class=\"wp-image-12816\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayso-001.jpg 797w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayso-001-127x160.jpg 127w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayso-001-254x320.jpg 254w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayso-001-768x967.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 797px) 100vw, 797px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The unit comes with no software, but has a link to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/sh\/q1q9yhahwtblb23\/AACpMeXQjYyD8ZWC-65vNgcxa\">https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/sh\/q1q9yhahwtblb23\/AACpMeXQjYyD8ZWC-65vNgcxa<\/a> printed on the box. (Link is still active in March 2026!). It&#8217;s an archive of the programming software, manual, and canned audio files for a whole bunch of standard messages. Here&#8217;s an archive if the dropbox link goes away: <a href=\"https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/SaySo.zip\">SaySo.zip<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If this page goes away, the software is now on Internet Archive: <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/SAYSO_Globord\">SAYSO Globord LED Sign archive<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The audio files used for programming the display are clearly <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frequency-shift_keying#Audio_FSK\">FSK<\/a>-encoded, but I haven&#8217;t quite worked out the relationship between the tones and the display bits. Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve worked out so far:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Files are made up of 12 audio blocks, each about 0.9 seconds long. Each block appears to correspond to one 7\u00d724 display screen.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mark (1 bit): Three cycles, 96 samples at 44100 Hz: 1378.125 Hz<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Space (0 bit): Four cycles, 256 samples at 44100 Hz: 689.0625 Hz<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The editor runs nicely under DOSBox, so you can experiment and save samples as WAV files. Here&#8217;s a sample display with its corresponding audio linked underneath:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayed1_0_003-mono-wav.wav\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12818\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"350\" src=\"http:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayed1_0_003.png\" alt=\"sayed1_0_003\" class=\"wp-image-12818\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayed1_0_003.png 640w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayed1_0_003-160x88.png 160w, https:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/sayed1_0_003-320x175.png 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure how much extra work I have time or inclination to put in on getting this working, but I hope that my preliminary work will be useful to someone (maybe <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.parallax.com\/discussion\/140773\/sayso-globord-led-message-board\">this person<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update to the Update (2026): Forest City Surplus in London, Ontario still has them (as of 1st March 2026) in stock at $5: Sayso Mini Scrolling LED Message Boards, Digital Business Signs. I scored a few, and may actually finish this someday &#8230; Update: I thought I&#8217;d work out this audio format some day. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[1104,2968,150,480],"class_list":["post-12815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-suck","tag-audio","tag-fsk","tag-led","tag-sign"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-3kH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12815"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18064,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12815\/revisions\/18064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}