Flip disc displays can be quite a task to drive, what with having some sort of actuator mechanism for each and every dot in the display. [Zimm] has built an altogether different kind of flip disc display, though, which gets around this with a complexity all its own.
The idea behind the build is simple. There is still an array of discs, in this case, 37 x 18 square discs that are black on one side and blue on the other. However, they’re not actuated by magnets or any kind of per-disc flipper. Instead, a CNC machine is charged with flipping them one at a time. There’s a tool head that scans through the array, and uses a color sensor and LIDAR to identify which pixels to flip and how far to push them. It’s not fast, by any means, but it’s a perfectly cromulent way to build a flip disc display, as it turns out.
If you so desire, you can draw or upload images to be displayed on PAR yourself, right from your browser. The project reminds us quite a lot of various plotters we’ve covered over the years, perhaps more than a traditional flip disc display, even.
I in fact wondered what would a flip-disc display be like if there was only one actuator. This takes it even farther, what if the actuator took its sweet time :D This beautiful display could work in a clock for the era before minute hands were invented.
HOORAY for someone using Onshape to design and shaing the link and not just STL files! (yes ofcourse freecad is better yes yes)
A somewhat faster system (one line of actuators) was commercialized in 1984: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-gCBh6rk3M (in Dutch, but you’ll get the gist).
a fascinating billboard display and a great video with all the retro shenanigans including hand pixeling seanconneries on tracing paper and 8-inch floppies. thanks for sharing.
P.s. I keep getting “connection reset”s (ff on acdroid) or certificate errors (ff on linux) for hackaday.io projects the last few days. The main site works fine. Others too?
Me too, on some networks, but works fine on others.
Now I’m thinking about how I could build such a display out of an old $20 Ender 3 3D printer.
A perfect story for fall….flip displays can create an environment similar to the susurrus of rustling, falling leaves.
This is really great technology, amazing. Passengers who are late to the airport because of bad weather that got all the departures re-shuffled will LOVE the meditative, soothing ASMR that this display exudes as it slowly crawls from pixel to pixel.