Ceiling Fan POV

From Catholicpenguin

The desire to lay in bed and observe the time is not a new problem; the ubiquitous clock radio fulfills this very purpose quite well. Although said device works fine for just about everyone* (* for some definition of everyone), that hasn't stopped people from exploring other approaches. The one that springs to my mind is the projection alarm clock. (The Batman clock in that Google Image Search is especially attractive. :))

I like the idea of the projector clock, as it doesn't require one to roll over and look at a bright clock radio. However, never content to just use the status quo, and given my love of persistence-of-vision projects, I decided to see about making my own. :)

The basic idea is, instead of projecting the time onto the ceiling, instead, use the already spinning ceiling fan, together with an array of LEDs along the fan blades to 'paint' out an image of a clock.

So far, this page simply documents a very early feasibility test of constructing such a clock. I used a Digilent BASYS FPGA prototyping board. The test itself was created by taping said board to the edge of a ceiling fan, counter balancing it with a couple of 9-volt batteries on opposing fan blades :), and turning the fan on high. The resulting image shows that this approach is feasible, and in fact one can read the alphabet as a mostly persistence display, if the fan is kept on high.

Source for this very simply demo is here.