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What will it do? For my Final Project I intend to build a zoetrope that has to be turned by hand, while by turning it at the right speed, it will show an animation of crane birds (physical objects) color cycling through the color spectrum, hence the name Thousand Shades of Crane. What it hopefully will also do is bring health and recovery for a beloved one as per the legend about folding 1000 origami paper birds.
2
What has done beforehand? Limiting this question to zoetropes with an electronic component in it (the history of zoetropes as such going back 5200 years) the answer to this question goes into two directions: zoetropes making use of stroboscopic light to lit physical objects like the by now famous All Things Fall, and zoetropes that electronically generate the “frames” of the zoetrope, like the Pristitrope of Quinten Swagerman. My zoetrope will be a separate animal, making use of a classical “daylight” zoetrope setup to generate the optical illusion of movement, adding illumination by RGB LEDs to it to add the illusion of continuous changing colour.
3
What will I design? I will design a zoetrope base plate, a crane bird in different positions, the electronic parts to output light to the crane birds, color cycling through 1000 shades, an input device to keep track of the turning speed of the zoetrope and a network in between and some other parts that are discussed in more detail on my Final Project webpage. No Arduino will be used!
4
What materials and components will be used? See B.O.M. Thousand Shades of Crane.
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What questions need to be answered? Again: a lot of this can be found on my Final Project webpage, in particular in the parts done in week 3 to 6.
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How will it be evaluated? The name of my project being Thousand Shades of Crane I consider the project successful when at least one crane bird, standing on the base plate, can be seen colour cycling through the colour spectrum, triggered by the rotation of the base plate at a predefined minimum speed.
