Looking at the looping GIF above you’re probably thinking, oh, another hard drive POV setup… Well… Not quite.
This is one of [Dev’s] latest projects, and it is a planetary map that shows the angular positions of all 8 of the major celestial bodies from any given date between 1800 and 2050. It’s also capable of showing analogue clock hands, the phases of the moon, and other simple graphics.
The main unit is a hard disk, but [Dev] milled off many of the features on it to give it a more exposed, purpose-built look. He designed the LED bearing PCB from scratch using EagleCAD, which sits on the back of the drive, with the spindle poking through. It has 8 rings of 5 surface mounted LEDs, which shine through opaque plastic diffuser rings that he printed using Shapeways — they feature small recesses to fit snugly on the board over the LEDs. On the top level is a 1mm thick black disc of some unknown material that [Dev] had sitting around, which now has 8 holes machined into it in the exact position of the LEDs.
A Cortex-M0 drives the LEDs using an LPCXpresso board which allows the LEDs to sit across only one byte of a hardware I/O port. On the software end, each rotation of the disk is segmented into three hundred and sixty 1 degree slices. This system allows him to achieve a circular resolution of 8×360 pixels at 25 frames per second. Not bad for a persistence of vision device!
Stick around after the break to see the rather entertaining demo video of the device.
Most. Unhelpful. Video. Evar.
I. Agree.
Excessive agree. WTFH was that all about?
I think that the whole article was pretty unhelpful. I have no idea where James got all the information for the article since the website he’s linking to only has two sentences of information. And he’s not very clear on “how” this machine works or how it relates to persistence of vision.
Planets are breaking up into fragments under the gravity of that huge sun.
Does anyone know the song of the video?
Lazerhawk – Massacre
http://lazerhawk.bandcamp.com
Gif does not actually animate in FF 25.0.1 (Ubuntu)
Works for me, FF 25.0.1, Ubuntu Saucy, KDE desktop. Did you switch off animations in FF?
the guy in the background is creepy as f***
Worst Video EVER…
http://projects.hackaday.com/project/154-Astrarium
Project write up starting to happen here. Better late than never!
Nice! I love it when we get to see all the details. Thanks for taking the time to document your work.