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Zoetrope

This is a 3d zoetrope with a ghost/pumpkin animation.

mike-rigsbyMike Rigsby
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This is a 3d zoetrope with a ghost/pumpkin animation.

I saw a post on hackaday about 4-mation and I decided to try and create my own device.

Of course the "flashing bars" don't appear in real life. An Arduino with a motor shield is used to control a bipolar stepper motor and led light strings. The twelve inch diameter turntable rotates at about 60 rpm (one revolution per second). The turntable is divided into 20 sections and a ghost/pumpkin is placed on each section. The led's are "flashed" every 1/20 of a second to provide the illusion of movement.

stepper_motor.ino

ino - 2.90 kB - 09/14/2018 at 21:35

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stepper mount.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 37.78 kB - 09/14/2018 at 21:35

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ghost10.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 1.20 MB - 09/14/2018 at 21:35

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ghost5.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 1.16 MB - 09/14/2018 at 21:35

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  • 1 × Arduino Uno
  • 1 × Arduino Motor Shield
  • 1 × Bipolar stepper motor
  • 1 × 12 volt dc 3 amp power supply
  • 1 × 12 volt led light tape

View all 7 components

  • Log 1

    Mike Rigsby • 09/14/2018 at 21:53 • 0 comments

    Wire according to this schematic.

    Install the sketch (included in the files on this site).

    Print two each of ghosts 3 through 9. Print three of ghosts 2 and 10. Arrange them in order on the wheel.

    The pumpkin part of the ghost/pumpkin came from Makie's Jack-O-Lantern on thingiverse.

    Plug it in (in a somewhat dark room) and watch the magic of animation.

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kevinsaccounts wrote 10/13/2018 at 15:38 • point

@Mike Rigsby Nice work! very happy to see someone inspired by 4-Mation :) and a great seasonal animation choice. Have you also seen Blooms and Slow Dance? those were the projects that motivated 4-Mation.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Mike Rigsby wrote 10/13/2018 at 21:39 • point

Thank you!  I was very happy to see that your project was funded on Kickstarter. I really like your frogs jumping--so cool :) I've built a version of Slow Dance (using a plastic Poinsettia) for Santa's Shop (https://hackaday.io/project/11397-santas-shop); a large animated window display that we provide for the community at no cost. Blooms is really clever too.

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Mike Rigsby wrote 10/12/2018 at 13:49 • point

Sorry about the diode, I lifted that part of the circuit from another project where I was controlling an electromagnet--no diode needed.

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wrote 10/04/2018 at 19:32 • point

Cool project! What is the purpose of the reverse 1N404 diode in the circuit? Thanks!

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