Miaking A Ball Of Light Twirl

[DearJoel]

I have this idea to take a hollisphere, attach it to a rotisserie motor at the top, and connect the electricity for the lights through a slip ring at the bottom.
You may also know slip rings as rotary electrical interfaces, rotating electrical connectors, collectors, swivels, or electrical rotary joints.
Has anyone done something like this with any success?
If so what slip ring did you use? How did you protect it from weather?
What other gotchas came up in the process?
My thought on options: For standard dumb, 110v LEDs it would take a two terminal slip ring.
RGB would take a three terminal slip ring, terminal1 for pos, terminal2 for neg, terminal3 for data.
I talked to a slip ring company and they said their data would only be 10mb. I'm not a strong computer guy, but would that be fast enough?
Looking for your thoughts and insight.


Joel Dearing

 

[Ɠαяєтн]

Have a look at these guys from Germany, just brilliant!

http://solderlab.de/index.php/led-projects/rgb-globe

 

[fasteddy]

Slip rings come in many variations and prices. I think having a weatherproof one will not be very cheap but is a necesity if using 110V

as far as 10mb/s then this should be enough. The amount of data is determined by the amount of lights being used.

The only thing im not sure about is what interferance may be generated by the slip ring

 

[BundyRoy]

What are the benefits of having a spinning strip of lights against a ball covered in stationary LED's. I figure you should be able to get the same effects both ways. There is a lot more LED's required for a stationary ball but there are less issues with construction and waterproofing all parts.


Edit: Thinking about I guess the biggest advantage is a much smoother rotation of the image. With the spinning strip there is no limit on image movement. With a lot of stationary LED's the image can only rotate in steps of 1 pixel width at a time.

 

[AAH]

Controlling the 8000 leds that that spinning ball equates to would be something of a logistical nightmare and by spinning the leds you effectively get a transparent ball. With very little more effort the design could be converted so that used some pixel strip or pixel nodes.
I love the design concept and if I had way more time than I do I'd love to make 1.

 

[DanJ]

That is just too cool looking. Maybe some day.....

 

[DearJoel]

Thank you for all the replies. While I am not looking for a "persistence of vision" trick like the spinning effect from the guys in Germany, though it is VERY cool, I am thinking of a "reverse disco ball" if you will

Thanks again for the feed back.

 

[mmulvenna]

Attached are two concept files I created a few years ago that I never did anything with. Perhaps you can use them.

The doc file is really an skp file created using Google sketchup an the pdf is a simplified version of the skp file.

rename the doc file to a skp file so you can be view it in sketchup

Hope it will give you some ideas.

 

[Beacy]

Hmmmm whioch software LOR....LSP....or Vixen

 

[DearJoel]

Doing this in LOR.

Thanks for the mock up, some great ideas here thank you