A Fully-Transparent Air Bubble Display

We all have good intentions when starting a new project, but then again, we all know where those lead. Such is the case with [RealCorebb]’s BBAir project, a completely transparent air bubble display. Although the plan was to spend about three months on it, the months slowly added up to a full year of tinkering.

It all started when [RealCorebb] made a subscriber counter using Minecraft campfire smoke to display the digits. Someone suggested using air to implement the next iteration, and for [RealCorebb], it was challenge accepted. After considering a syringe for each channel, a separate pump, or one pump and many solenoids, [RealCorebb] settled on solenoids to push air, and designed a PCB to reduce the amount of wire spaghetti.

Once [RealCorebb] created an acrylic enclosure and wired everything up, it was time to test it out. Everything worked, except that air was leaking from somewhere, which turned out to be the way the solenoids were installed. Then, of course, it was time to don sunglasses and write the code. We still don’t know if [RealCorebb] settled on water, glycerine, or silicone oil, but the end result is quite nice, and we’re betting on glycerine. Be sure to check out the build video after the break, which has English subtitles.

Although we’ve seen our share of bubble displays before, we often discuss bubble LEDs displays like this one.

 

 

 

5 thoughts on “A Fully-Transparent Air Bubble Display

  1. A group of of from the Twin Cities Robotics group helped the artist Bruce Shapiro build a three-story tall, 96-tube wide bubble display at the Ontario Science Centre.
    https://www.taomc.com/pipe-dream

    There was MUCH tuning the length and “stretch” of the tubes to get the display looking great.

    Here are some photos of the build project:
    http://bobodyne.com/web-docs/robots/OSC/

    It was a fun project, but doing something complex 96 times is a bore.

  2. Very nice! It is a bit abstract but I think that adds to the effect. Reminds me of the android in a Culture book whose face was a bowl of alphabet soup and it communicated by spelling words with the pasta.

Leave a Reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.