[Sean Hodgins] is out with his latest video and it’s a piece of art in itself. Beyond a traditional project show and tell, he’s spun together a cyberpunk vibe to premiere the volumetric display he built from an OLED stackup. Update: He’s also documented the build.
The trick of a volumetric display is the ability to add a third dimension for positioning pixels. Here [Sean] delivered that ability with a stack up of ten screens to add a depth element. This is not such an easy trick. These small OLED displays are all over the place but they share a common element: a dark background over which the pixels appear. [Sean] has gotten his hands on some transparent OLED panels and with some Duck-Duck-Go-Fu we think it’s probably a Crystalfontz 128×56 display. Why is it we don’t see more of these? Anyone know if it’s possible to remove the backing from other OLED displays to get here. (Let us know in the comments.)
The rest of the built is fairly straight-forward with a Feather M4 board driving the ten screens via SPI, and an MPU-6050 IMU for motion input. The form factor lends an aesthetic of an augmented reality device and the production approach for the video puts this in a Bladerunner or Johnny Mnemonic universe. Kudos for expanding the awesome of the build with an implied backstory!
If you can’t find your own transparent displays, spinning things are a popular trend in this area. We just saw one last week that spun an LED matrix to form cylindrical display. Another favorite of ours is a volumetric display that spins a helix-shaped projection screen.
that video was awesome!
Totally badass! Very cool!
Too much floof, not enough meat (err, display not displayed enough, maybe 10s in whole 317s video?). Cube rotating in 3d would be cool.
I’m amazed at some of the projects the creator has enough energy for such a video which looks like it’s a project in of itself.
I agree it was light on details but it gave my Primer vibes which more than offset it.
I’d have liked more videos of the unit in action, it’s too much to ask but I wanted to see a demo of something like super mario on it. Not an actual game just a guy moving (or dot) on a background with some parallax.
just watched the movie Primer yesterday lol it does give those vibes
There are no rules as to what should be in a video. It’s his own thing and he’s smashed it out of the grounds compared with many. Nothing wrong with fun.
Check out Media Division, which is all strange cinematography nonsense. No idea if it’s a topic you’ll like, but it’s a good example in my books of the showmanship/detail balance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Il_l3tu6Q&t=3053s
Full disclosure, I collect old camera crap and am somewhat, but not entirely German.
Yes, but he forgot to give credit to Chopin.
Ah yes, the movie Johnny Pneumatic, about a boy and his inflatable dolphin. :D
Very cool project. My suggestion would be to put the OLED sandwich in epoxy with similar optical resistance to the glass, for improved image clarity.
Oil would work also and be somewhat more reversible, but also a potential mess. If they cost $2 each rather than $20, then yes, slosh it full of epoxy.
Recently found crystal clear UV cure epoxy (which would presumably work well here). Where have you been all these years??!
It’s not that it has to be exactly the same refractive index, but more close would be more good.
Very cool video, also reminds me of Sparkfun’s version: https://www.sparkfun.com/news/2885?_ga=2.76976593.593068306.1614835506-636151729.1614835506
@StephaneAG said: “Very cool video, also reminds me of Sparkfun’s version: https://www.sparkfun.com/news/2885?_ga=2.76976593.593068306.1614835506-636151729.1614835506“.
The 1.51″ 128×56 Crystalfontz transparent mono OLEDS [Mike Szczys] found with his Duck-Duck-Go-Fu are $22.68 each at qty.-10 to 19. So 10 of them is gonna run $226.80 – Ouch! But Crystalfontz has a reptation for steep prices. The Sparkfun Transparent Graphical OLED Breakout comes with the 3D 1.51″ 128×56 mono OLED dislays and it costs just $39.95, which seems impossibly low. Unfortunately, the Sparkfun product is now unobtainium. I did search Alibaba/AliExpress for the 1.51” 128×56 transparent mono OLED dislays and easily found them, but even on Alibaba they cost $15.00 each in qty.-2 through 999 pieces.[1] So that comes out at $150.00 for qty.-10 – still pricey.
References:
1. https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1-51-Inch-128-56-Mono_62576273272.html
Have you tried contacting sellers? They might be willing to significantly reduce the price.
@randomoneh said: “Have you tried contacting sellers? They might be willing to significantly reduce the price.”
These displays are a commodity product. Usually it takes a lot more than qty.-10 to get prices down significantly. The Alibaba link I provided has detailed pricing through the volume tiers.
Embedding quantum dots in a cube would be nice.
Just imagine two stacks of transparent full colour displays, inserted into a pair of vr goggles.
To what end?
Augmented reality? For the fun of it? Not every project needs to have a rigid economical/practical benefit.
If you are suggesting putting one stack for each eye, then it would be pointless. Since each stack would only be seen with one eye, you’d only have monoscopic view of each stack, thus loosing the benefits.
If you are suggesting something else, then please ignore my comment.
Super cool video, and yeah those are Crystalfontz Transparent OLEDS.
We’ve had little success removing the backing from most OLEDs however we’ve done it with a standard STN LCD.
This is great. all the way to the end with the little python script for the credits.
If they’re reasonably transparent, a pair of two or three of these stacked might make a nice AR display.
They seem to be about as transparent as a pair of lightly tinted sunglasses. I think the real issue would be resolution.
What benefit would these provide over existing displays?
These are significantly more transparent (~70%) than say lcds with two polarizing filters which would only have a theoretical transmittance of ~25% so depending on the application and requirements this may be a better choice. HUDs and AR are two applications I can think of off the top of my head that would benefit from higher incident light transmittance.
We have seen a few mods of people doing clear LCD displays, and with several of the same display like an old 16:9 VGA dell (as an example) would the effect work similarly with full color ?
An amber (or full-color) OLED stack could do a very convincing Nixie tube simulation, as it would be able to mimic the actual stacking of the numeric elements. Very expensively, of course.
That video could’ve had the same amount of useful information and been 30 seconds long.
Agreed, but it was kind of cool.
wish i could see it in person the video doesn’t really convey the 3D effect very well (obviously) very cool idea
Johnny Mnemonic*
How can there *not* be a ‘u’ in there? ;-D
Fixed.
best hack on hack a day in months.
Wish I could do this just for the fun of it and writing interesting software to tinker with volumetric displays but that’s gotta be a good $400-500 just in the displays! I’m sure he’ll recoup more than that from ad revenue from the posted video but I’d take much longer lol.
I looks like he put more energy into the video than the hack itself. It was a cool video though! I agree with others that I wish there was more actual content in it.
L33t k3yb0rd !
Respect.
(in English)
All the keys are blank on his keyboard.
This is awesome. Good work. He also did an indtructable with information on how to build yourself.
Ah, thanks for mentioning. I’ve added the link into the article.
Intriguing point. Some early phone screens were *somewhat* translucent.
The S3 Neo was a bit like this and with extreme care could be turned into something very much like a TOLED.
Obviously the trick here would be to get the panel and *carefully* remove the back opaque cover without bending the display. you’ll be left with a very fragile glass and polymer wafer.
I used a spudger to scrape away through the metal backplate, cotton bud and acetone then shine a light through it.
You’d probably get away with maybe four of them layered up though the back one should probably be left intact minus its front UV shielding.
For even more brightness take off the shielding on all but the front screen.
Hint: Don’t get any solvent on the interconnects where the ribbon plugs in.
Silicone oil or glycerin will work as a bodged light transfer for at least temporary purposes.