I will have a dedicated page for this project on the site - but as you may have noticed I have not even managed to get my old projects upload as yet.
Anyway, this new POV project uses just one pic18f4550 microcontroller. This does everything that my old 8x85 POV did AND MORE! well actually it is now quite easy to change it to 8x whatever you would like it to be - you just need to change the pixel counter variable to suit your desired graphic / animation resolution.
It also has a position sensor to ensure that the image does not drift.
I have also made this one so that it is powered by an external power source rather than batteries. You can see this in a number of images. basically the negative / ground connection is just connected straight through the motor shaft and then the positive is connected to a graphite block (taken out of another motor). The graphite block has been attached to a spring that I made out of some solid wire and then soldered to a little piece of circuit board to hold in place.
The graphite block then presses against a blank circuit board underneath the POV circuit. So as the board spins, the block is always touching the PCB and therefor you get a constant source of power.
I have also included a wireless receiver so that it can be controlled wirelessly and even adds the opportunity to play games on the spinning display.
