Inspiration
I was inspired by a video I saw about a “3D” display based on the concept of spinning LEDs. These spinning LEDs let the display be transparent didn’t actually make the display 3d… This of course really bugged me, so I want to make one that allows for proper 3d display.
Background
After some research it seems the common name for this type of display is a volumetric POV display. Most of these are incredibly expensive, so the final product will have to be small and fairly simple.
This display is a cheap prototype though they have many electronics resources I don’t. Instead of using a encoder or accelerometer they used a IR sensor to find RPM to keep the display stable. Having looked through the rough documentation on how this works, its very complicated….This is also the only example I can find of an actually 3D display.
Proposal
I really like the idea of a 3D display and there lots of things I want to include but the scope needs to be small enough for 4 weeks. Not entirely sure how I’m going to go about this yet.
The 3D display has 3 options for what it will display:
1. A static 3d object
2. A Dynamic 3D object, 3D GIF?
3. Snake, but 3D. Adding controls for the game would add a lot of complexity so it will play itself in Realtime, never repeating. (This is my favorite but may be difficult to pull off)
What do you think would be interesting to display (Static or dynamic)?
I think that this idea is really cool. I think the idea of spinning an LED light board to create a 3D image is so cool. Do you think you would use something like a servo motor to spin the LEDs?
I feel like something that will really show off that the image is 3D might be a cool thing to display. It doesn’t have to be too complicated, but something like a cube or something where it looks different from different angles would be awesome.
I haven’t decided exactly how to spin the LEDs yet but I’m looking into a few options. They need to spin relatively fast so ill have to use a proper motor instead of a servo, but I need some way to track RPM. I have extra brushless motors and ESCs from combat robotics so I may use those even though they are way overkill.
You used my video, damn ok, well if you scroll down in the comments I left an idea on how to scale it up, spoilers its by putting the entire set up in a vacuum so air resistance doesn’t break you electronics as they spin. Honestly I am really existed for this one as I love dynamic volumetric displays, especially one like of liquid or flame simulations, but how are you gonna code this thing, it seems really complicated because of the constantly changing positions of the LEDs?
I’m going to create a method that converts input static 3d images and takes the current location of each LED (estimated) and controls each LED based on its current position on the image. For animated objects, the 3D image will be updated at a given refresh rate.
This works in theory, might be slow in practice.
I really like this concept as I have never seen this 3D effect in person, but I think you should at least start with the easiest option. Since you don’t know how difficult the hardware will be to work with, it is probably safer to plan to do the easiest graphics on it until you are sure of your capabilities.
I had never heard of this kind of display before, I’m excited to see how you make it. I would start with a static object, and once that is complete and you have time add some motion to it. If you want to make snake, start with the board? This sounds like a super complicated project, do you have experience building mechanical/electrical structures similar to this?
Yea, I have lots of experience from RBE and personal projects, but nothing really involving LEDs or fast refresh rates. There will definitely be lots of learning during this one!