Tag Archives: POV

LED POV fan update

Zach writes: I first posted on how to reprogram a “Programmable Message Fan: Model 45 Series” POV fan a few years ago, and the code I posted no longer works with the current versions of the Octave and Arduino software.  The original post still describes how the fan works and how I went about figuring […]

PyroElectro: Who can build the best P-O-V contest

PyroElectro is currently running a contest for who can build the best handheld or spinning POV device using an FPGA or CPLD. They’ll be presenting an example POV using VHDL in Lesson 9 @ PyroEdu. The top prize is a Basys2 Spartan-3E FPGA board valued at roughly $90.00.   Visit PyroElectro POV contest page for more […]

Mobile POV device uses Parallax Propeller

Here’s a unique mobile POV device using the Parallax Propeller. Gareth (chiprobot) designed this gadget using the Propeller MCU driving eight UV LEDs, blasting UV light onto a phosphorescent sheet of vinyl. He says the coding utilizes the Propeller’s built-in ROM character map, so code size is very small (i.e., no big data tables). You […]

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 […]

PIC16F882 development board for workshops

Here’s an Arduino styled PIC16F882 development board built for a university microcontroller noob workshop. A MCP2200 USB-to-Serial IC handles the USB communication, while the board features all the support circuitry required by the PIC, such as the 5v power supply, quartz oscillator, and the ICSP programming header. The board was initially developed for a workshop […]

Workshop update May 10th, 2012

Work on the POV Toy continues, and it’s the subject of the workshop video this week. We might as well give up guessing the subject of the next video, it’s whatever is on the bench Thursdays. The firmware is being tweaked and calibrated, and finalized for production. We’re thinking about adding mounting holes to the […]

Open source HDD POV clock

Jason designed a persistence of vision hard drive clock. He etched numbers on a copper disk and added 8 LEDs below it. Each LED represents a character on the display and blinks when the corresponding digit passes over it. His project is Arduino-based, and the project files can be downloaded from GitHub. My replacement platter  was cut […]

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 […]