Rich Quinnell, editor in chief of Microcontroller Central, created an LED hand message board to display a message in the air.
Using persistence of vision, the LEDs trace out a message in mid-air when the hand is waved back and forth. Rich got the idea after a reader sent in a picture of himself waving a circuit board with LEDs that displayed a message in the air. He modified the original software so he could have a choice of different messages.
Rich Quinnell's hand message board uses LEDs to trace out a message in mid air when the hand is waved back and forth.
Some improvements Rich suggests are adding a keyboard for an unlimited amount of messages, and to make the one inch of text space bigger so the messages can be seen from further distances.
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Nicely done, Rich. I have seen similar message units that use an accelerometer to start and stop the display, but you did the job with a small MSP430 board. Clever. --Jon
Jon, thanks. The board does have an accelerometer and it is what triggers the display. It was a challenge, though, separating out the gravity signal from the motion signal. Also, I owe a lot to my blogger Ryszard Milewicz, who started this with a program that displayed the I heart MCC message when he waved it around in his hand. I "featureized" it a bit, adding the multiple message capability and adjusting the display timing somewhat. Oh, and it's my hand.
Thanks. Fortunately I didn't have to do it from scratch, and my code would probably make a grown C programmer cry, but I was able to do what I wanted with it.
Hi Rich, Very clever approach to developing a cool embedded product. The method of modifying code to change the product functional behavior is what I discuss with my ITT Tech Electrical Engineering Tech students every class period. I often use this rapid development method for embedded devices and gadgets I create in my home lab as well. Very cool project!!!
Some of my code would make a grown C programmer cry too, RichQ. What some folks might call "spaghetti code" I prefer thinking of as "thinking outside of the box" :) Besides, since I am Italian, the moniker fits in my case LOL
Rather than reinventing the wheel - you simply readjusted it - a great time saver that still took tech know-how - Great job!
Clever, but not a new idea. I saw an LED message wand at Toys R Us many years ago. The message was several inches high, and it included a built-in keyboard.
Instead of pine, it might be better to use styrofoam. Seams the weight would waer on your wrist after a while. Another improment would be to use a spring steel joint between the handle and the "hand". That way, a little motion would set the hand into action with less strain on the wrist. Just a though for anyone concidering to build this.
The foam is a good idea. I had to make this in short order out of supplies around the house and tried using some springy stuff for the wrist but it was hard to get a consistent movement, so just made it rigid. Not a new idea, I know, but had fun with it.
My kids had such a toy MANY years ago. You swung this paddle shaped object back-and-forth and it displayed your keyed in text using LED's. In the dark your eyes provided the persistence to make a stable image.
(My youngest is about to turn 39 years old... so this was quite a long time ago.)
I saw it already on TV several years ago, possibly the "Gizmodo" gadget that someone else mentioned. It may have been a news item from a Consumer Electronics show at the time.
I remember that it was displaying messages from a keyboard buffer and the display was moving left and right on the tip of a large metronome.
I saw a fun one a few years ago for the 4th of July. It was a battery operated fan that would display animation of fireworks when the fan was running. The fan blades were a flex circuit with RGB LEDs that produced the animation. I wanted to say that it was a very cool toy, but that would be an awful pun even if it wasn't intended.
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