Electronic Phenakistoscope!

January 1, 2014 by James Hobson 9 Comments

phenakistoscope

Looking for a clever way to build a Phenakistoscope? Maybe you’re more familiar with its other names; Fantoscope, Phantasmascope, or perhaps its close cousin the Zoetrope?

If you’re still scratching your head, that’s okay — they have really weird names. What we’re referring to here is a type of optical illusion that mimics movement by showing a series of still images at an offset interval — this can be achieved by looking through slots, strobing a light (like in this case) or even by the use of mirrors.

This particular Phenakistoscope is a very simple but clever design that makes use of a recycled stepper motor from a printer, a CD as the animation disk, a strip of LED lighting, a few potentiometers and an Arduino to control the strobe. It works by synchronizing the strobe frequency with the motor rotation, resulting in the image in motion effect.

Stick around after the break for a full gallery of the build and a demonstration video.

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Digital Zoetrope Uses 18 LCD Displays

August 2, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

[Jasper] sent in a project he, [Quinten], and [Mr. Stock] have been working on for a while. It’s called the Pristitrope and brings the classic 19th centrury paper-based animation device into the 21st century with 18 LCD displays.

The lazy suzan portion of the build was fabricated out of plywood cut on a CNC router and fastened together with the help of a slip ring to transfer power between the stationary and spinning portions of the device. For the electronic part of the build, eighteen LCD displays were connected together on a data bus with each display independently addressable by a microcontroller.

One really interesting feature of the Pristitrope is its ability to detect if it is currently rotating clockwise or counterclockwise. While [Quinten]’s video doesn’t show off the full possibilities of this feature, the spin sensor makes it possible to always have an animation played in the right direction regardless of how the Pristitrope is spun.

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3D Printed Zoetrope

January 11, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 25 Comments

Normally, 29 men walking around in an endless circle would be the stuff of an [M.C. Escher] engraving. [Tobias] turned this into a reality with a little help from some LEDs and a 3D printer.

Like his earlier project, [Tobias] built himself a nice little strobing zoetrope that maintains the illusion of movement by flashing LEDs at precise intervals. Instead of a flat 2D image, [Tobias] went for a walking 3D figure that marches to the beat of a timer circuit. The figures themselves were printed via Shapeways.

The electronics were improved for this iteration. Formerly, [Tobias] used a 555 and a whole bunch of auxiliary components. The circuit was improved for this version to uses Schmitt triggers and an optical encoder. The easy-to-build-on-perfboard schematics and layouts are available, so feel free to build one for yourself.

[Tobias]’ zoetrope isn’t much different from the gigantic Charon sculpture seen at last year’s Burning Man. Sure, it’s not 40 feet tall but it’s still a nice piece of work.

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Building A Zoetrope Using Kinect, Processing, And A Laser Cutter

March 19, 2011 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

A zoetrope is a device that contains a disk full with a series of images that make up and animation. A couple of different methods can be used to trick the eye into seeing a single animated image. In the past this was done by placing the images inside of a cylinder with slits at regular distances. When spun quickly, the slits appear to be stationary, with the images creating the animation. But the same effect can be accomplished using a strobe light.

The disk you see above uses the strobe method, but it’s design and construction is what caught our eye. The animated shapes were captured with a Kinect and isolated using Processing. [Greg Borenstein] takes a depth movie recorded while someone danced in front of a Kinect. He ran it through a Processing sketch and was able to isolate a set of slides that where then turned into the objects seen above using a laser cutter.

You can watch a video of this particular zoetrope after the break. But we’ve also embedded the Pixal 3D zoetrope clip which, although unrelated to this hack, is extremely interesting. Don’t have a laser cutter to try this out yourself? You could always build a zoetrope that uses a printed disk.

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