RGB POV Display
- January 19th, 2012
- Posted in Uncategorized
- By rucalgary
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10
There are 64 RGB LEDs spinning around on an aluminum frame, spun by a motor picked up at Princess Auto for $20.
I control everything via an ATMEGA1284p microcontroller, as it was one of the only micros that had the memory space I needed for images.
I hope to get some more color out of the system by PWMing the color output, but we will have to see that later. Right now I am displaying images just by changing the source code, but I hope to get wireless updates working over Zigbee or Bluetooth.
I am attaching the Code and Eagle Files for all interested. I also made a quick app to generate image data from BMPs and PNGs. You can get it here: AVR POV Display Source (1083).
Can you provide details of the slip ring you used?
Yup! I figured I could probably get away using a washer to transfer the 9V. I went to a local hardware store and found a 2″ steel washer, and some smaller rubber washers to insulate the washer from the frame and motor shaft (GND). Then I built a small “brush” assembly using some hobby brass cut into two strips. I then bent them into sort of an ‘s’ shape, and drilled a hole through them and attached them to a ring of acryilic with a machine screw to the 9V switching regulator below. This way, I have two slip ring contacts, and I haven’t noticed any issues yet.
Have you offset the weight of the led board on the other side. That should cut down on vibrations significantly
Yeah… I did my best, but I am far from a machinist. I think you can see the rods I added for counterweight at the other end of the frame.
Funny this came up when it did, I’ve been toying with the design of my first POV (right now, a solitary bank of 16 hyper-bright SMD blue LED’s), and I’m thinking of using the NRF24L01 modules to push data directly to the assembly.
I’m still quite heavily based on the Arduino platform, but the supporting library for the NRF chips supports a 32-byte payload, more than enough to push data to the display, albeit, probably in more of a line-by-line affair then real-time speeds.
Maybe some food for thought? The modules are certainly cheap enough (eBay) that you might consider getting some to play with. They have replaced virtually all of my xBee wireless links (with a cost an order of magnitude lower), which were only passing a few bytes of data here and there anyway!
They certainly look nice! I think I like the interface more as well. SPI is nicer to work with than UART in my opinion. I will have to order a few. Thanks for the suggestion!
A simple fix would be a rudimentary shock mount. Just with what i have laying around my workshop I would take some sugru (if you don’t have some I suggest having some on hand all the time)
Fix the cylindar to a heavy base via the sugru….make sure when you do it the thickness of sugru between the base and the cylindar is about 1/2 inch to 1 inch. You can just roll the sugru into pillars. The trickiest part would be mounting it without crushing your newly made shock mounts for the 24hour cure time.
Nice project!
I like it, and have been meaning to play around with that stuff sometime!
Very, very nice! I have a suggestion for your next project …
This has a single column of RGB LEDs. Suppose in the next generation, you have (say) 17 columns of LEDs, and the LEDs in each column are topped with an outward-facing tube, so that each column can only be seen from a particular angle. One column can only be seen head-on, the next column can only be seen 3 degrees clockwise from head-on, the next column, 6 degrees clockwise from head-on, and so on. Then, you feed a 3D image to your display, so that what you see with your left eye and your right eye are views of a 3D object from different angles … and you have a real 3D display screen.
That would be pretty difficult to work out… the cylinder would have to be much wider to accommodate a wider board.
I like the general Idea though.
For wireless transmission of images u may consider the wixel wireless module from pololu. I’ve been using it to wirelessly program the arduino for quite a while now. Apart from range(40-50 feet) its a pretty appetizer.
http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1337