So I'm building a new bench power supply, and thats not this story. 
While designing it, I spent a lot of time pondering how to display the 
voltage and current. Not digits, fluctuations are too hard to see 
machanical is nice, but take up lots of front panel realestate. 
I wanted something that had a high resolution. I quickly played with 
modifying a laser printer scanner with a red laser, but it didn't look like it was practical.
I also had some neon plasma displays, but they physically cannot do 'dot' mode.
One of the ideas I came up with, I had to try, even tho I knew it would not have 
the resolution I wanted. The idea was to take an 8x8 led array, and use 3d printed jigs to 
hold a set of PPMA fibers in the right place to convert the low-resolution rectangular array into 
a high resolution linear bar. I'd let the fibers fall in any order and cast it upon the 
software department (me) to sort it out.

A few 3d prints later, 2 glue attempts and I had it, well, mechanically anyhow.
It sat for a while, during which I went thru a few phaes of things. 
Along came another project and I needed the breadboard it was on, so, time to finish it.
With a keypad and serial port added, I sat down for ... its 2am now... a few hours, and 
built the translation array for correcting the fiber positions

Now that its working, I can take it apart.
see thingiverse #4619875 and #4619880

A copy of the soruce code is available for hints.
https://github.com/ruenahcmohr/array64