13 Nov
1998
13 Nov
'98
5:29 a.m.
Several times in the past I've seen home-brewed and perhaps
CPU-driven signs that consist of a single vertical line of
perhaps a dozen or two LEDs.
The "sign" doesn't appear to be anything but a line of glowing LEDs.
Only when you view it at a glance, as your vision moves quickly
from side-to-side, do you see that it is rapidly
flickering the
vertical scanlines of a simple dot-matrix image: maybe the digits
of the time, perhaps a smiley face, or some other simple image.
Anyone here know the name of this sort of device, so I can web-search
for others who've made one? It wouldn't be hard to craft. To be
obliquely on-topic, I've thought about making a simple circuit that
would be driven by the parallel port of an old PC.
- John
13 Nov
13 Nov
6:10 a.m.
John Foust <jfoust(a)threedee.com> wrote:
Anyone here know the name of this sort of device, so I
can web-search
for others who've made one? It wouldn't be hard to craft. To be
obliquely on-topic, I've thought about making a simple circuit that
would be driven by the parallel port of an old PC.
About 12 years ago Jim Philips and Richard Ottosen made signs with a column of
LEDs that was attached to a motor such that the path of the LEDs described a
cylinder. They called it a whirlygig.
A few years later, Rich Ottosen and I decided to try to build a name badge
that worked as you describe; a single column of LEDs that would show a
message as your eyes scanned past it.
We used a surface-mount PIC16C54 microcontroller and eight surface-mount
LEDs on a PC board about 1 inch square. A pair of lithium coin cells clips
to the back of the PCB.
By analogy to Jim's device, we called it a "whirlless gig".
Cheers,
Eric
Visualize Whirled Peas, or at least whirled LEDs.
6:12 a.m.
On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, John Foust wrote:
To really put this on-topic, I'm pretty sure I have an article on this in
an Antic magazine. The 8-bit Atari version was patterned after something
similar at Disneyland, IIRC. I'll try to dig up the issue and get back to
you...
Several times in the past I've seen home-brewed
and perhaps
CPU-driven signs that consist of a single vertical line of
perhaps a dozen or two LEDs.
The "sign" doesn't appear to be anything but a line of glowing LEDs.
Only when you view it at a glance, as your vision moves quickly
from side-to-side, do you see that it is rapidly flickering the
vertical scanlines of a simple dot-matrix image: maybe the digits
of the time, perhaps a smiley face, or some other simple image.
Anyone here know the name of this sort of device, so I can web-search
for others who've made one? It wouldn't be hard to craft. To be
obliquely on-topic, I've thought about making a simple circuit that
would be driven by the parallel port of an old PC.
- John
Aaron C. Finney Systems Administrator WFI Incorporated
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"UNIX is an exponential algorithm with a seductively small constant."
--> Scott Draves
7:41 a.m.
John Foust wrote:
Several times in the past I've seen home-brewed and perhaps
CPU-driven signs that consist of a single vertical line of
perhaps a dozen or two LEDs.
This has been done a number of times. One of the early electronic magazines
had a clock that you needed to scan your eyes over to read the time. A
friend of mine designed a pendulum for an art show with the LED section
about 6 feet long or so where graphics could be displayed. I don't recall a
name ever being associated with this type of display. It would be a
*really* fun thing to do now that multicolor LEDs are available and a full
color graphics unit could be done fairly "easily".
8 a.m.
If you need a rationalization that it is ON-TOPIC:
20 years ago, at Jim Warren's THIRD West Coast Computer Faire (the one time
that it was in LA), there was a fellow with a booth there demoing one such.
(1st in SF, 2nd in San Jose, 3rd in LA, 4th (first one that I exhibited
at) in SF. Eventually it was bought out and DESTROYED.)
There was a "light sword" version marketed by one of the major toy
companies. But it had WAY too much mass to be usable. I gave it to a
friend who was going to re-engineer it to put LEDs on the windshield
wipers of his plane!
--
Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366
Berkeley, CA 94710-2219
On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, John Foust wrote:
Several times in the past I've seen home-brewed and perhaps
CPU-driven signs that consist of a single vertical line of
perhaps a dozen or two LEDs.
The "sign" doesn't appear to be anything but a line of glowing LEDs.
Only when you view it at a glance, as your vision moves quickly
from side-to-side, do you see that it is rapidly flickering the
vertical scanlines of a simple dot-matrix image: maybe the digits
of the time, perhaps a smiley face, or some other simple image.
Anyone here know the name of this sort of device, so I can web-search
for others who've made one? It wouldn't be hard to craft. To be
obliquely on-topic, I've thought about making a simple circuit that
would be driven by the parallel port of an old PC.
- John
9540
days inactive
9540
days old
4 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
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aaron＠wfi-inc.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
marvin＠rain.org