[Blair] sent in a project he’s been working on for a while. It’s called the Crayolascope, and it allows for the creation of an extremely low-fi volumetric display using a Crayola Glow book.
The Crayola Glow Book is a pretty neat toy composed of four clear plastic panels. Each of these four panels are illuminated from the side to reveal the image drawn with fluorescent ‘glow pens’. [Blair] had the idea to take several of these Glow Books and draw a rudimentary 3D animation by sequentially lighting one of the 12 plastic panels.
After tracing single frames from a rotating cube animation, the Crayolascope pages through the plastic panel-based 3D display with the help of an Arduino Mega. For each frame of animation, the Arduino illuminates a single display with edge-mount LEDs. Of course there’s a control panel to regulate how fast the frames are shown, along with the ability to scrub a frame and apply a fade effect.
[Blair] admits there are a few problems; there’s a lot of internal reflections in the array of clear plastic sheets, and frames near the end of an animation are really only observable in a very dark room. [Blair] hopes the next version of the Crayolascope will use thinner plastic panels to increase the depth of the animations – a solution that may just solve the decreasing brightness of ‘deeper’ panels.
That is really cool. I think that if each panel had the edges wrapped in electrical tape it would solve much of the internal reflection issues…
Wicked cool,just need to get some lcd computer monitors in this config for perhaps for better resolution. Great job
We just need a stack of those transparent display to make a real good 3D display
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6YQiKmDWpI
Didn’t someone use a technique similar to this to create a fake Nixie tube display? (Cause if they didn’t its an idea.)
you would be correct.
make sure to use a clear resin with the same refractive index as the display and then the internal reflection is negated.
Ugh, I hate Vimeo, the bloody video never plays when I click the link, all I get is a still from the video any no video player – even though I’ve turned off all script/ad blocking for that site.
Uploaded a second copy just in case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBuS3GqJJY0