Ditch that fancy wide-format LCD monitor and go back to the days when animation was made up of moving frames played back by a specialized device. [Pieterjan Grandry] built this gif player which does just that. The frames of the animation are printed on a paper disk. When spun and viewed through a looking hole the same size as one frame an animated image is formed.
If you know a thing or two about how movie projectors work you might have a raised eyebrow right now. To make the animation smooth you need a way to hide the changing of the frames. With a projector there’s usually a spinning shutter (like a fan) that covers the transition between frames. In this case, [Pieterjan] has mounted the case of the gif player far enough in front of the paper disk that the image is in shadow, making it hard to see. A microcontroller responsible for the speed of the spinning disk flashes some white LEDs with precise timing which gives light to each frame at just the right time.
This is really a 2D equivalent to the 3D stroboscope we saw a few days ago.
[Thanks Agtrier]
Nice, I’ve always liked those type of animation devices. Zoetropes and such…
NYAN CAT in da house!
There isn’t a shutter. trying to use blinking LEDs… It’s no good…
I have always thought it would be interesting to try to utilise the strobe effect of domestic supply frequency (60Hz US/50Hz UK).
There would be a couple of things to provide problems:
1) only visible without natural light
2) some lights dim between cycles less than others
3) sychronising the mains frequency with the presence of a picture.
I’m sure there are more problems to be addressed, and I am equally sure that to solve these problems would most likely be trickier/more expensive, than current solutions.