Embedded engineer Erich Styger has teamed up with college students to create a pixel clock with a distinction: every pixel raises itself from the clock’s floor to actually stand out because it shows the time.
“It took longer than anticipated (1.5 years), with large assist and contributions of three college students engaged on that venture: Leoni Etter, Jan Rohrer and Livio Stadelmann,” Styger writes of the clock venture. “It began with a loopy concept, exploration of various ideas, by fixing a number of challenges as much as a last working and shifting pixel clock.”
The concept is easy, although the execution proved much less so: the clock takes the type of a matrix of chunky addressable RGB LEDs, that are lit to show the present time. The lit pixels, although, are bodily raised above their unlit siblings — and because the show updates, the pixels bodily shift to make sure that stays the case.
“The venture concept began recognizing some mini stepper motors out there on the market on the web,” Styger explains. “No knowledge sheet, no specs, besides ‘mini stepper motor @5V.’ Evidently these motors are used for motorized cameras as within the Chinese language Vivo V15 [smartphone]. Those available on the market are in all probability surplus motors not utilized in manufacturing.”
These stepper motors, designed to permit the hidden front-facing digicam within the Vivo V15 to lift up from and decrease down into the physique of the telephone, had been chosen to drive what went beneath the working title “SmArtWall.” An preliminary check construct proved the idea, although the motor driver chosen was unreliable and the linear modules difficult to stack right into a full matrix.
An preliminary iteration, dubbed SmArtWall, proved unreliable and troublesome to stack right into a matrix. (📷: Erich Styger)
Shifting the the STMicroelectronics STSPIN220 stepper motor driver solved that drawback, and a redesign meant the modules turned stackable 5 layers excessive. A tinyK22 board, powered by an NXP K22FN512 microcontroller, drives every module, with sandblasted diffusers in entrance of every LED for a satisfying visible impact.
“The software program runs on the Arm Cortex-M4F [core],” Styger explains, “is written with Eclipse as IDE [Integrated Development Environment] in C/C++ utilizing FreeRTOS. It options an computerized and command line mode, with some ways to drive and alter the matrix.”
The complete venture write-up is offered on Styger’s web site, with venture supply code and design information on GitHub beneath an unspecified license.
Principal article picture courtesy of Livio Stadelmann.
