Added: 2 years ago
From: NatureTM
Views: 34,428
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  • Ist that a 3 Phase Motor? How did you control it? Im searching for a tutorial all the time!

  • very amazing job dude !

  • @NatureTM That is an amazing clock. Wow. Will you be making a n00by guide of any sort? I really want to make one of these but have no real electronics experience, although I do have a lot of HDD to practice on.

  • hey grest clock, i am curently trying to make one of these. My only problem is the measurements. how big should the slot cut be for the platter? and how should i space out the led's surounding the platters?

  • @MichaelUifalusi I think a thinner slot would lead to a sharper image, while a wider slot would lead to a blurrier(softer?) image. I guess it's a matter of preference, but I tried for a thin slot and I believe mine is around 1 to 2 mm wide. As for the LEDs, we want to make the face of the clock evenly lit, so we evenly space the LEDs to light the area behind the platter uniformly. I used a ribbon of SMD RGB leds I found on ebay. Maybe this is a typo, but you said platters(s). Remove all but 1.

  • @NatureTM alright thanks, but i have another question. what did you use as a counter for the rotations of the platter? I am using 3 platters for my hdd clock, (bottom having a hole drilled into it so that and infared sensor can keep track of the rotations) the middle one having a strip of white tape, and the top platter having the slot cut into it. how is it that you managed to do this clock with only 1 platter?

  • @MichaelUifalusi 1 platter. IR phototransistor (sensor) above platter, IR LED below (facing eachother.) The sensor gets no light from the IR LED until the slot is between the two, allowing light through. We then know the current position of the slot. We know the time it takes for a complete rotation by measuring the time between signals.  For a simple example, say we find it takes 100 milliseconds per rotation.

  • @MichaelUifalusi Then we know that 25 ms after the last signal, the platter is a 1/4 rotation past the sensor. Say we want a white line at 1/4 rotation. Every time the sensor gets a signal, we wait 25 ms, then turn on the red, green, and blue LEDs at the same time, and then quickly turn them off.

    The HDD enclosure behind the platter is painted white. Whatever color we turn on, the background is illuminated that color. We see through the slot to whatever color the background is lit.

  • is it 15K RPM? That would pretty much be the bomb if so :)

  • @KangarooBoo08 It was a 7200, but I fried the board so now I drive the motor with a cheap ESC for model airplanes. I can control the speed and it should be able to hit 15K, but it gets a little loud. I also worry about the platter breaking apart. Higher speeds also give the microcontroller less time to do its work, leading to delays in updating the image. Delays cause visual artifacts which are more apparent at higher speeds. Ideally, I want to run at the slowest speed that still maintains POV.

  • Well, there's a slot cut in the platter, so you can see through the slot to the underneath, where I have some lights. The platter spins, and I use a sensor to know where the slot is as it spins. If I want to make the 12 o'clock position red, I turn on the red light at the instant the slot is at 12 and turn it off almost instantly. You see the red light coming through and it looks like a red line. I just make sure wherever the slot is, the lights are the correct color for that section.

  • that is awsome

  • balllaaaaaaaaa

  • So awesome.

  • Wow, I would love to make one from one of the many old HDD's i have lying around.

  • @Brok3nblade Was that sarcasm?

  • How would that have been sarcasm? I have many spare PC parts lying around that I have accumulated over the years.

  • @Brok3nblade

    I was unsure as to whether you were implying that you and most people don't have a HDD lying around.

  • awesome

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