Vishalapr made this Instructables detailing the build of his DIY POV Display based on ATtiny85: The first time I saw a POV (Persistence Of Vision) display was on a show called FAQ on TV. The POV display consisted of an oscillating shaft with 6 LED’s mounted on the end of the shaft. Since then I have always wanted to make […]
Category Archives: POV Toy
Handheld POV toy
Here’s a handheld POV toy packed into an Altoids tin. The brain of this device is a Parallax SX microcontroller, while it’s powered with two AAA batteries. 7 LEDs provide the POV display that is capable of storing 32 messages. There are 32 message slots — 16 are straight hard coded bitmaps, 16 are text […]
BitBltBlade – WiFi controlled POV lightsaber
Madox designed the BitBltBlade, a WiFi controlled POV lightsaber designed to display images in conjunction with long exposure photography. The BitBltBlade uses the hackable TP-Link TL-WR703N router and Kean’s USB Expander board to wirelessly control a strip of RGB LEDs. The concept of operation is that the user would use their smartphone which can upload photos […]
WORKSHOP VIDEO #21: USB POV Toy calibration tests
Today we play around with the latest USB POV Toy hardware and firmware. The POV Toy is a persistence of vision (not division…) device, but we added some special features. First, a USB connection makes it effortless to upload new patterns. Second, an inexpensive accelerometer actively detects the waving motion and syncs the pattern. We […]
Workshop video #05: USB Persistence of Vision Toy firmware
After more than a year of off and on development, there’s finally a working firmware for the USB Persistence of Vision Toy. With a bit more tweaking we’ll be ready to release the code. This week’s workshop video is an overview of the POV Toy project. Displays pattern or words when waved in the air […]
7400 competition entry: Discrete logic POV clock
Matt’s entry in the Open 7400 Logic competition: Discrete logic POV clock. This persistence-of-vision clock was built entirely out of discrete logic chips. The design consists of three boards, a LED array and a drive motor. The digit board keeps the time while the display board controls the LEDs. The digit board Every second, a pulse increments the […]
uPOV persistence of vision with an accelerometer
uPOV is a persistence of vision device with an accelerometer. This is the same concept we’re trying for with the USB POV Toy. The problem I had with most of the current POV units is that they required skill to use effectively, timing your swings so that the message only goes in the one direction, […]
Pyro propeller clock POV
Chris from PyroElectro writes:After having seen so many propeller clock POV videos on Youtube, but no real description of how they work or how to build your own, I set out to make one and document how it was built. The Pyro Propeller Clock POV design criteria was short and sweet: be as simple as […]
USB POV Toy: miniscope v3
We wanted an easy way to see the accelerometer data from the USB POV Toy. We made a simple firmware that works with the miniscope v3 oscilloscope program. Instead of sending voltage readings, it sends the accelerometer data from one axis. This screenshot shows the change in readings while we wave the POV Toy back […]
USB POV Toy: Soldered prototype
Here’s the soldered prototype of the USB POV Toy. The first power up exploded a backwards tantalum capacitor with an impressive spark, but after that was sorted everything seems to be ok. The tiny MMA7455L accelerometer took a few tries to solder, but now we can access it with the Bus Pirate using I2C or […]