In this video, I introduce this project - a device that spins a column of LED's around really fast and blinks them in such a manner as to draw a stationary image in mid-air. I talk about the microcontroller I chose to use... LONG LIVE THE PIC's! I'm actually in love with PSoC's now, but don't tell microchip that. I also go over a bit of the hardware that I am using and present some of the PCB's that I made for this project.
Here I go over the electronics involved in this project.
In this video, I go over the tedious assembly programming to make this thing light up!
Finally, we get to see the thing in action. Sorry for the poor quality of filming. I do not have a super expensive video recorder. If you step through the video frame by frame, you'll see that the spinning display rotates about 60 degrees between frames; that is, there are about 60 degrees of uncaptured motion between each frame. Because of this, the camera does not capture the display in action too well, but if you stop on a frame that is captured, you'll be impressed.
This project turned out to be a hidden gem. It was the right level of difficulty for me in high school. It also looks really flashy. The display could definitely be wider. I forget exactly the architecture of a PIC microcontroller, but I remember that the only reason I didn't make the display wider is because I ran out of quick access memory within the microcontroller.
Bunch of Electricals | Matthew Ian Burns
burns.matthewian@gmail.com