Yesterday at Target (a department store retailer here in the US) I saw a toy for $4.99 that would display predefined messages on a rotating display. It contained a circular circuit board (all electronics were on this board) that was rotated by a small motor. On the circuit board were 8 SMT red LEDs, plus a couple more yellow and green LEDs just for looks. All the components on the board had been laid out to achieve proper balance.
Thanks Nigel,I traveled 1600 miles north to my campus.Now I'm unpacking everything and planning to continue with the stuff.The video is slow to load,you may use software like FlashGet to download it to your local drive and then play it
Yesterday at Target (a department store retailer here in the US) I saw a toy for $4.99 that would display predefined messages on a rotating display. It contained a circular circuit board (all electronics were on this board) that was rotated by a small motor. On the circuit board were 8 SMT red LEDs, plus a couple more yellow and green LEDs just for looks. All the components on the board had been laid out to achieve proper balance.
They must have modified the rotor many times to achieve perfect balance that requires least trimming.I think I can do it too.But with a lotta money prepared - you know - for making new boards :lol: BTW,Dan,did you examine how they supply electricity to the rotor?You may couple the signal without contact,but now the power.I'm currently using the shaft as GND and a brush as VCC.
Initially it was shaking terribly,just as I expected.But I placed 3 wide solder arcs evenly around the rotor PCB.I added some excessive solder to spots of the arcs to find out the direction the C.G is from the center.Then I changed the amount of solder to achieve best banlance I could get.Now it still strembles,but it's a LOT better than it was in the beginning.
Actually the stability is perfectly good.Although there's still something weird to determine.When static frames of all lit pixels are displayed.They just look like a static dot matrix LED cylinder panel.The video shows a sudden flash of unexpected content.It's something I need to find out why.It only happens when the last character starts to be the only thing left on the "screen".I'm not really familiar with C programming,but I've done this thing using C code.I will try to write the code in AVR assembly,which will provide me with optimized timing efficiency.