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Show HN: I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display

benholmen.com

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Re: Show HN: I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display

#31

Post by benholmen »

fentonc wrote: post #25

Awesome project! I built a somewhat similar 30-pixel display: https://www.chrisfenton.com/the-pixelweaver/ Mine was entirely mechanical (driven by punch cards and a hand-crank), and changed all of the pixels in parallel, but a lot of the mechanism development looked extremely familiar to me.

This is incredible! I can appreciate how much work it took to make this happen. Well done!

I was recently in the presence of some linotype machines from the 1800s and it's so good to be humbled by the achievements of people who came before us. That machine was so complex, I could barely begin to figure out how to manufacture one. Your discussion of looms reminds me of that!

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display

#32

Post by benholmen »

smokel wrote: post #29
boredpudding wrote: post #23

This used to exist! I remember a video about this large analog billboard in Amsterdam (?). Unfortunately I can't find the video. Will edit if I do (or anybody else finds it first).

Perhaps you are thinking of Daniel Rozin's "Wooden Mirror" (1999)? https://www.smoothware.com/danny/woodenmirror.html

Rozin was a direct influence on me! Seeing his stuff ~10 years ago got me thinking about unorthodox displays.

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display

#33

Post by benholmen »

ashleyhindle wrote: post #20

This is so great How is it volume wise while it's working? Manageable or painful?

Pretty quiet! I spent some time figuring out how to make sure the stepper motors don't whine (the answer is microstepping and decent motor controllers). The pixel turning is very quiet unless it misses slightly, then it makes a clunk.

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display

#34

Post by drivers99 »

benholmen wrote: post #13
alnwlsn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By my estimation, it would only take 1/3 of a year to render

y'know, I've been excited / feared that Bad Apple would show up. The good news is a lot of frames would probably just be a few pixels to change from the previous frame, so some might draw really quickly. Basically you want to avoid keyframes on this thing, they'll kill you

Some of the ports of Bad Apple have had to deal with this and they narrowed it down to the few changes needed for each frame. When there were too many pixels to change all at once, they would make fewer changes in exchange for a loss of quality.

https://trixter.oldskool.org/2014/06/19/8088-domination-post...

https://trixter.oldskool.org/2014/06/20/8088-domination-post...

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display

#36

Post by boothby »

xpe wrote: post #22

Another idea: have the cubes point an edge straight forward (instead of a face). Then if each cube has two adjacent dark sides and two adjacent light sides, one could setup two ‘simultaneous’ images: one viewed from the left at 45° and another viewed from the right. (Each pixel would have four possibilities.)

Similarly, the camera could stay face-on and double the pixel count with largely the same hardware.

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display

#38

Post by boredpudding »

smokel wrote: post #29
boredpudding wrote: post #23

This used to exist! I remember a video about this large analog billboard in Amsterdam (?). Unfortunately I can't find the video. Will edit if I do (or anybody else finds it first).

Perhaps you are thinking of Daniel Rozin's "Wooden Mirror" (1999)? https://www.smoothware.com/danny/woodenmirror.html

That's a very good one, but in my case it was a huge billboard that was advertising movies and stuff.

It had cubes in different colors so from further away it would look like an image.

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display

#39

Post by mjwhansen »

benholmen wrote: post #18
xnx wrote: post #10

Wow. Impressive. I would never have guessed you'd use a Vanna White / Wheel of Fortune turning method.

That it, the method will forever be called the Vanna White Method

Ben, can I get a vowel, please?

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display

#40

Post by tristor »

derefr wrote: post #28

Speaking of "alternatives to e-ink for a zero-power-use-when-not-updating dot-matrix display"... Has there ever been designed a "display" that is just a thermal printer hidden in one end of a box, and a take-up spool + tensioning spring hidden on the other end, such that the "display" is then a continuous thermal paper "scroll" stretched across the box behind [UV-protective!] glass, that can be "refreshed" by printin…

Ooh, I like this idea. You could also use the box structure to stretch the display so it has 4 sides if you build the mechanism correctly, which means as you refresh the image on the "primary" display it moves the other images to the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary displays before it gets taken up. You can use tensioned rollers at each corner hidden by the frame if you plan for a gap for "bezel".
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