Hello, this is my first post in this forum, i have never used arduino before but i have been reading and watching all the tutorials i can find about it, and soon (in about a week) i will have my own arduino uno.
the reason of why im making this topic is because i am making a propeller clock as a project for my school, i have little experience with Pic microcontrolles and personally prefer the C oriented language of Arduino.
the problem is that every page that explains how to make on of this does it with the Pic asembly language, which makes it very difficult to understand the algorithm behind it, i was wondering if anyone could explain me how this clock could be made with arduino and what should i know in order to make it myself.
The technique is called "persistence of vision" or "POV". Many people have built all sorts of variations. I suggest some time with Google to get a general idea of what, how, and who... http://www.google.com/search?q=arduino+pov
Welcome to the forum. That clock seems difficult requiring both electrical and mechanical skills. If you want something easier to do, maybe buy a POV thingy from adafruit. BTW, I also have my own POV clock stuff. Here is a link to my gadgets. Look in the middle of the page.
I do warn you that improperly secured hardware on a rotation platform is dangerous.
thank you guys, ive found a lot more articles searching for POV clock than propeller clock
im curious about one thing though, how do you send the information of the tachometer in the base of the pov to the microcontroller without using a cable?
ive noticed that most clocks dont have any obvious connection between the two of them
There is a sensor (typically Hall Effect magnetic switch or photogate) on the rotating board to sense where to start displaying. You have to display the same message at the same spot several times a second to get persistence of vision. Speed of the rotation is calculated by the rotating board, using time difference between two subsequent sensor readings. It's like if there was 250 ms of time between subsequent triggers from the sensor, the speed is 1/250ms=4Rev/s