1. Principles and practices¶

Before we did anything, we read the Fab Charter to get a quick idea of what Fab Labs provided.

This week I worked on defining my final project idea. I have been fascinated with the idea of a hologram and how it seemingly displays images with only one row of LEDs. While nothing currently can do something like this, using a concept called Persistence of Vision creates a hologram like effect.

My Final Project will use three rows of fins equipped with fast refresh rate RGB LEDs. Having three rows will allow me to create a 3D hologram like effect. However, only certain LEDs have a fast refresh rate. I’m thinking of using the Dotstar LEDs from Adafruit which has fast data and PWM rates suitable for displays such as mine.

A microcontroller similar to an Arduino will be utilized to control the LEDs with precise timing. An interesting roadblock to this is the connections between the controller and the LEDs. When the LEDs are spinning, the microcontroller has to spin along with them or needs a connection that isn’t hindered by the spinning. Wireless input will also be included with the controller in order to remove any further cables outside of my project besides from power.

Inspiration was gathered from a project developed by Maximilian Mali named voluMen: