Stupidly Huge POV Display

pov_gear

[Mario Mauerer] and friends were commissioned to build this 2m persistence of vision display (translated) for a party (in a hight-voltage lab no less). Dubbed “Display from Hell”, it uses 100 blue SMD LEDs to generate the POV images. They’re connected to an ATMega64 via shift registers. Their target speed is 600rpm for a flicker free image, which means the propeller tips are moving at 140mph. The board can be updated wirelessly via IRDA and plans for adding SD storage are in place. You have to see and HEAR this thing in the video embedded below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Jqr4ZFC7wc]

28 thoughts on “Stupidly Huge POV Display

  1. another awesomely useless example of what you can do with LEDs. seriously, why are geeks (myself included) so obsessed with these things? Aside from low power lighting, indicating the state of things and well, toys, what practical use to LEDs really have?

  2. Reminds me of my dad’s plans to do 12″ version but with a spiral of led’s then just define a window in the top or side quarter and to Mechanical TV with it. like was done with a nipkow disk. in the first tv’s before CRT

  3. Looks like they put lexan shields beside it at the installation. At the end of the video they have some rather huge tesla coils in proximity of each other. Is that safe to run, or would the TC’s interact dangerously with each other?

  4. It`s not a lexan shield, it was wire mesh. It was operated in an closed area in order to prevent any dead people.. The Rotor stores about 800-900J…

    The HV-Stuff in the lab has been re-arranged in order to create room for the party, during “normal” operation of the lab, the coils, generators and all the toys are a bit better placed… :)
    The HV-Lab belongs to the swiss federal institute of technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland and the party was organised by AMIV, the student association for mechanical and electrical engineering.

    Greets
    Mario

  5. Did they consider using industrial grade single phase AC motor for their project ??

    Looks like they had some trouble with the motor and its power supply…

    There is definitely some room for improvements !! :-)

  6. I’ve been thinking more about uses of LEDs.

    Remote controls are another.
    Opto-isolators, too.

    And last, but most important:

    Semiconductor lasers are a form of LED.

    Think about it.

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