Silent Orchestra POV aka "Death Ring"

t

Rewiring the stator was a success.

Now more speed/power!

tsMilling of the BLDC motor plate:

Milling the new driveshaft:

I found a Brushless Washer motor on Ebay, and am going to use this for the drivetrain.

Brushed had too many problems at higher RPMs / prolonged usage.

Stay tuned!

This is the current version in progress. It will include improved interactivity, as well as better position sensing via the gyroscope.

A whole new design with drivetrain was drawn up in Solidworks and created at Makerplace and FablabSD (it's current home).

This new version adds:

a lightweight aircraft grade aluminum ring

CNC machined drive train

3HP AmpFlow brushed motor

Kelley controller with 0-5v sense for power

2x750 watt drive PSUs ( from robotics)

RPM control via Arduino, hall effect sensors and an R/C pass 0-5 Speed controller signal

physical positioning via a MPU-6050 ( for low RPM POV)

serial bluetooth position sending to processing

Drivetrain with Idler installed

Plasma'ed piece on ring assembly

Welder with the finished Al ring!

Rotating Electronics

Communications Diagram

Electronics Schematics

We needed something a little stronger, so we created a CNC version of the ring with intersecting parts, wrapped in a custom aluminum band.

This was the version we shipped out to Youtopia!. Our ring was 5x as heavy and burnt out our drive mechanism (drill). Efforts were made on-site to hack a brushless drill to power the contraption, but fell short. Festival participants could spin the wheel manually as well as interact with the colors via the Leap Motion.

This iteration utilized a drill potentiometer for speed control, it was mostly either on or off.

We started off with just a PVC ring powered by an old drill. The pixel pusher network, slip-ring and interactive layers in processing were created during this stage.

Crucial piece: the high RPM slip ring

Here is the finished prototype taken slightly before the core snapped.