In poking around the InterTubes yesterday, looking for items related to my latest Lost Knowledge column, I happened upon Jake von Hildebrandt’s SteamTV project, which uses the Nipkow disk TV technology I included in the column. And a Jensen desktop steam engine for power! Really cool. Unfortunately, it appears that this project hasn’t been worked on since April ’07. Let’s hope he gets back to it at some point.
Gareth Branwyn is a freelancer writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture, including the first book about the web (Mosaic Quick Tour) and the Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots. He is currently working on a best-of collection of his writing, called Borg Like Me.
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The artist Chris Burden did a piece in the 70′s called C.B.T.V. that used this tech.
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/cbtv/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Burden
This gave me an awesome idea, and when I learn a little bit more about mirco controllers and PWM, I will probably make it. Take an old hard drive (7200rpm ot 10krpm, maybe 5400rpm is I can’t pwm fast enough) and a really bright RGB LED and make a full color mechanical display, with a decent frame rate (I’d aim for either 60Hz or 24Hz) and maybe a decent resolution (320×240?). The biggest feasibility problem would be making the disc with the holes in the right spots and being the right size and be able to withstand 10k rpm without shattering. We’ll see if I ever figure something out.
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