experimental horology

[gfish]

I apologize for not updating about projects recently. The one big one that I've finished (fireprop) isn't officially public until this weekend. I should get a post up about it next week.

So what have I been obsessing over otherwise? Well, this.

Comments

[bigbumble]

Incredibly cool idea. Since you only plan on actually using it for one day, may I suggest that you use heavy black card stock instead of sheet metal? There is a standard .050" thick card stock that is regularly CNC laser cut for model rocket fins. The material is relatively cheap, which allows for testing and mistakes(or multiple days if you are so inclined). It can be treated with epoxy for strength and weather protection.

[gfish]

Well, the idea is to have it for the entire week of Burning Man, I just chose the median day. I haven't run the simulation yet to prove it, but I'm pretty confident it will still work quite well on the other days.

[catsittingstill]

Very cool!

What if you make the "light-blocking-array" longer, so that the projection for, say, 12:10 falls in a different place than the projection for, say 12:20? And alternate back and forth, so 12:30 falls in the first spot, and 12:40 in the second, and 12:50 in the first and so on?

That way it seems to me like you could have fewer holes and thus more remaining background; maybe that would eliminate the "bits have to float in midair" problem?

[gfish]

I thought about that, but if I can get it working this way I'd really prefer it. It just seems... more magical to have them all in the same place.

[tylik]

That is highly awesome.

If you made the holes a little wider, could you have it so at 12:15 both 12:10 and 12:20 were visable, at different intensities? Then you could kind of interpolate...

[gfish]

Wider is bad, because that lowers temporal resolution. But I suspect in reality that is more how it would work, since the sun isn't actually a point source and you'll get some diffraction through the apertures etc.

[sistawendy]

Two Three things:

1. What software did you use for this?
2. Be careful about wind resistance.
3. This is awesome!

[gfish]

POV-Ray, which I've been playing with on and off since the mid 90s.

[peteralway]

And if you prop it up to tilt it, you can use it on other days as well!

Lovely, lovely scheme.

Hmm, you could probably use the same system for a digital display simulating a dial. Or some other slowly evolving image.