Bicycle Wheel Pov

bike pov

here is a slick hack involving a bicycle wheel and a persistence of vision toy.

one thing that’s really cool about this one is there is a second led row that blinks out bitmaps backwards on one side of the wheel.  this lets you print out text messages and have them be readable from both sides.  it appears to work really well — i’m thinking that the author is probably not a republican

27 thoughts on “Bicycle Wheel Pov

  1. When is someone going to make a sweet POV globe? All you need is a ring of LEDs in a plexi globe, and a way to regulate the speed of the rotation — maybe a stepper motor? An added bonus is that blue and green map pretty nicely into land and water.

    For extra credit, have it be able to speak 80211.b or Bluetooth to plot geolocations. Combine that with IP plotting via http://www.hostip.info/, and you have your browser history displayed on the globe. :) Maybe the geo points could be in red (but if you have R, G and B LEDs, you might as well make the whole thing full color)…

  2. Actually, I’ve had that idea for a number of years. A small pancake generator, with a counterweight. From this, you can generate power, and sense wheel speed. An array of LEDs, you’ve got a message. The problem is teaching a ghetto-boy to program the thing. *Maybe* in this day and age, with a USB interface and some super-simple Windows software for them to run on that stolen laptop, it could be managed.

    It’d be real interesting to see what happen if the generator armature locked up at 75MPH. Prolly a little wheel bounce :)

    I’ve always considered more as a hubcap type item than a wheel rim replacement system. Great for those old El Dorados and Pontiacs with factory wheels. Wouldn’t work so hot on mags.

  3. “some of the capitol police even thought it was pretty funny” – All it will take will be one who doesn’t. Someone might think that it was patriotic to do a stick in the spokes which would probably hurt the display and definitely hurt the rider. Having been ‘over-the-falls’ and breaking both wrists, I recommend that you avoid this. Great Hack! Quick – start selling spinner wheels with radio to a keyboard inside!

  4. “Someone might think that it was patriotic to do a stick in the spokes which would probably hurt the display and definitely hurt the rider.”

    i’m not too woried about it. there’s plenty of other things: drunks, cellphones, car doors, bike theves. maybe out in the sticks/suburbs it’d be a different story.

  5. well, I like the hack (it’s pretty clever, and if i had the time and patience i’d go do it to my bike)… but i don’t like the phrase in there… Bush rocks.

  6. I once did a 1 meter across POV display, then a 20 cm small one, and now I’m working on a dead silent blue one, on a 22.5 cm clear acrylic disc. Check the light projects on my homepage (and maybe the other projects too)!

  7. hi joe,
    in all fairness, the photo i posted was the only one on the site at the time this article was written. check the flickr post date for the other two photos if you wish to confirm for yourself.

    regarding political hatred: after careful analysis of the author’s bike wheel message, i am pretty certain that he doesn’t hate politics.

    one might say that his pov message amounts to stubborn persistence of vision, but i welcome you to interpret it as point of view.

  8. Hey you with the globe LED idea… it’s been done. I saw one for sale at the circuit city in a Utah mall. Just my two cents. But i think it would be cool to make a multicolor one, preferably incredibly gigantic, and put it in a half- sphere room, and have it rotate around the whole room, shining to the center, giving the illusion of something all around you, and maybe play a movie on it or something… Just my ” think it would be cool”

  9. re: #15, 16

    I believe you about the dates, so please accept my apology.

    I really enjoy the site, which is why I found the overt political “message” disheartening. The stuff you post here is inspiring, there are a million other sites I can visit to see someone ranting about politics. At any rate, I was wrong about the photo attribution, thanks for reponding.

  10. Hi, I stumbled on your website a week or two ago and have been through all the posts and comments quietly. I decided I should post my firstcomment. Not really sure what to comment but anyway. Cool blog. Will visit in a bit to see more of what youve got to tell me.

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