SpokePOV -- yes!

[nibot]

SpokePOV test run. April 3, 2006.

The Spoke POV is a toy that uses persistance of vision to display an image inside a rotating bicycle wheel. The basic contraption is a row of thirty LED's, each controlled by a microprocessor. A hall effect sensor and a magnet give a signal that allows the microprocessor to calculate the wheel velocity and calculate which LED's to illuminate at any given time, producing a phantom image (here, a biohazard symbol). I ordered a kit for this thing from the lovely and ingenious LadyAda at MIT. After a couple hours in the secret underground electronics laboratory here under the U of R, voila!, it's alive!

That's vyncentvega's bicycle, and thanks to lert for (unknowingly!) loaning the batteries. Click on the picture for a few more.

Comments

[ex-mrgd583.livejournal.com]

i'm surprised to see your ingenious picture. that painting in the bathroom is slightly more understandable now.

[134013413.livejournal.com]

Sweet!

Are you going to have just 1 strip per wheel or several?

And now go and work on the xoxbox! :)

[fg.livejournal.com]

pretty freakin' cool, man.

[nanomonkey.livejournal.com]

Wow, that didn't take you long at all to put together. How difficult is it to imput new images? Is there an editor included?

Okay, I guess I have to buy one (two?)...

[nibot.livejournal.com]

It's really not hard at all. There's a nifty image editor included, too, written in Python. Check out the "Use" subpage of the SpokePOV page. You can put multiple SpokePOV sticks in a wheel and since they all reference the same magnet for position information, they'll stay in sync, and the image will appear more stable at slower speeds.

[nanomonkey.livejournal.com]

I just bought one of each color...kinda splurged. I'm hoping that with the three colors and four fram animation I can do some neat patterns. I'm picturing growing vines/plants or animals or some such.

[limegreensneaks.livejournal.com]

Please ride that bike passed one of the bio department softball games (our team name = biohazards)!!

[in-alaska.livejournal.com]

google maps cannot find the secret underground laboratory!

[vyncentvega.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

[vyncentvega.livejournal.com]

I like the pacman (http://www.ladyada.net/make/spokepov/index.html) idea. I wonder if you could program an animation that scrolls between the front and back wheels?

[nibot.livejournal.com]

The stock hardware/firmware will do animations of 1, 2, or 4 frames. I imagine it would be very easy to modify it to do an arbitrary number of frames, by slapping on a larger EEPROM.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Of course the front wheel and rear wheel will always have their distinctive colors.

[ankaerith.livejournal.com]

Next project: Video Wheels (http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/pimpstar-led-rims-the-video-164150.php)

[lert.livejournal.com]

If only I had been there, instead of just my batteries!!

I could be lying

[vyncentvega.livejournal.com]

There there; we referred to your batteries as "Aimee" so you were there in bisected spirit as well as power-supply.

I hope you are lying

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure that's any consolation!

(not lying)

[lert.livejournal.com]

^ me