Spin Peggy, Get 3D POV

We put a temporary ban on posting POV projects after receiving several LED spheres back in May. But we had to lift the injunction after seeing this superb Volumetric 3D POV display by [Wes Faler] and [Don Smith].

Their creative use of several readily available components adds to the alluring setup; the central elements being just a box fan and Peggy kit from EMSL. The video after the jump doesn’t really do the project justice, but if you missed it at Maker Fair Detroit and can’t make your own it’s the best you’re going to get.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xtUwAwZf0E%5D

19 thoughts on “Spin Peggy, Get 3D POV

  1. Could you do this using a standard LCD? Granted, the pixels might not be as bright, but other than that, whats stopping someone from making a 3d high-res display using POV?

  2. SchrodingersCat –

    We looked at LCD panels – we could not find any fast enough – need about 1ms (1000 frames/second).

    This example runs about 15 fps.

    In the Ping/Pong demo – the computer is playing against itself – uses less space than simmulating.

  3. Wes here. We tried to figure out a LCD solution. At 100 slices per revolution, each needing to be drawn at least 10 times per second, we hit 1000 frames/second on the 2D display. The Peggy2LE’s Arduino can handle that, but we couldn’t find a LCD panel with that kind of frame rate. If you know of one, pass it along!

  4. This actually inspires me a bit, not with a peggy (little rich for my blood, hence the ghetto matrix I made), but I do have some left over matrices, enough for a 16×16 model, and some various motors

    I dont know about the arduino, as a arduino user I do love it, but I also have a pic32, the launchpad, and a 16 bit freescale

    even though the resolution would be much(much)lower the added boost in raw cpu power and efficiency of software, would allow some interesting playtime with pwm

    ok that’s it, its on the list! (right after about 2 other things)

  5. “We put a temporary ban on posting POV projects after receiving several LED spheres back in May.”

    Why would you put a ban on POV projects? I see no ban on Arduino projects in-general?

  6. Ok, since I can’t see it in person and the video doesn’t do it justice, I just have to know… Is it really a 3-D “pong”?

    By that I mean do the “paddles” move forward and backward as well as up and down to intercept a ball of light that appears to be moving in 3 dimensions?

    I can’t tell from the vid. Nice looking work, regardless though!!

  7. Nice, I’ve been wanting to do this since at least 1990, but when I worked out data and refresh rates, despaired of homebrew lashups being possible for a long while. Some form of SATAII link over an optical or mechanical commutator miiiight be the way to go these days.

    I got headaches trying to figure out how even to do a 5×5 proof of concept with a z80. I kinda drifted off into halfassed designing a vector processing engine with a matrix processor based on multiple parallel z80s. Yeah it was kinda similar to the stream core type architecture now common, but even for proof of concept, z80s weren’t gonna be fast enough. I put that aside rather than try and develop it what now seems like 15 years or so too soon.

    Anyway, I discovered there was some kind of analog driven radar display using POV techniques back in the 50s but it was either hush hush or had too many problems to be practical at that time.

    I am thinking however, that the way forward with these is gonna have to be in vacuum, which is a whole ‘nother can of worms, but you at least should be able to spin the things at a decent rate without pesky air resistance getting in the way…. and then we probably run into mechanical issues with the array flying apart at 10,000 rpm or so.

    I still don’t know if this is a dead end or just needs lots and lots of development. I do actually have other ideas for volumetric displays, I guess I should get off my arse and do something about them this time though.

    RW222

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