Blinky POV Spinner Project

[jwheaton]

This is my first pass on a Blinky POV Spinner.

It is made from PVC and 1/4" carriage bolts. The batteries (3 AAA cells) sit inside the long tube at one end. The other end has the Blink POV circuit card. A smaller PVC section is mounted perpendicular, on the 8"-long carriage bolt such that it can be held in one hand and spun. At first I tried to balance the spinning pivot point. But I realized that you can only keep it spinning with one hand if one end of the long tube is heavier than the other.

It is too ugly at the moment to post a picture of, and I still have to experiment with proper delay time and spin RPM versus the length of the message. However, here is a video of my first pass. The message is just "Blinky!" in case you can't read it.

http://youtu.be/4JnZ2tkfoe4

-Jim

[layne]

Wow, that looks totally awesome! I'll bet it looks even better in person (since cameras aren't the greatest at recording POV-type visuals). I really like the idea of having it un-balanced so you can spin it with only one hand, that's a great idea!

I might have to try building one of these myself for use as a demo!

[jwheaton]

More updates.

I decided that having the batteries with the blinky is really best (not putting them in the spinner PVC).
So, I mounted the batteries in an Altoids tin and put in a switch for power. (There is a push button switch that will eventually be hooked up to the blinky momentary switch, just to make the programming easier to do.) The Altoids box has a 1/4" bolt connected so it can be mounted at the end of the PVC.






I want to try to mount it vertically next, so I can spin it over my head.

However, I am noticing that, being right-handed, it is easier for me to spin it clockwise (from my point of view). This means that the text comes out backwards for the viewer!

Is there any way to choose the text directionality (reverse the output buffer or something)?