Mechanically Multiplexed Flip-Dot Matrix
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
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I previously built a Prioritising Mechanical Multiplexer which allowed one main drive motor to control three outputs. There were lots of suggestions in the video comments about using it to build some sort of display, so I thought I'd have a go at a prototype flip-dot display using one one servo per row. Of course this could be expanded to more columns with no more motors, and more rows with only one servo per row.
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Former toy designer, current UA-cam maker and general robotics, electrical and mechanical engineer, I’m a fan of doing it yourself and innovation by trial and error. My channel is where I share some of my useful and not-so-useful inventions, designs and maker advice. Iron Man is my go-to cosplay, and 3D printing can solve most issues - broken bolts, missing parts, world hunger, you name it.
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"i'm using ping pong balls because i have a lot of them"
*prints a fake half-ball anyway*
Yeah, I don't get it, why not just cut ping pong balls?
@@НикитаКотенко-ц8э a half ball could look bad on camera with all the light because of the black background and the thin white plastic.
Yeah, why not just have a black and white slate?
I hate this about the channel, he always prints A LOT of things that can be made much more easily, cheaply and quickly in other ways
@@НикитаКотенко-ц8э Would be way more effort!
Have you considered using ramps on the lever, to flip the dot while "swipe past" the dots. No jamming, no waiting?
And no need to know the previous position, especially if some external influence messes with it.
that was my first thought as well
Well yes and you could simply build kind of centering ramp, then from there you could assign either go fully open or fully closed
I was thinking in same direction also.. In addition, servo can have a park position if need to just pass through without touching the flips
You could also 3D print them as compliant devices so there's only a single moving part for each pixel and spring is built in.
I think the flipping part should be 90° flipped, the middle point should be free to pass the hole at any state, while the small diviation in the angle would flip it to the correct side as it passes by. It would make your life a lot simpler.
I think that would even let it flip them on the move, just scan the lead screw back and forth twiddling the servos as you go. 180 the servo horn when you get to the end and your idea even works in both directions. I'd live to see how fast he can get the thing going.
I like the cached current state method - but for me use the actual balls and a small inclined plane - drive the ball pusher/holder up and down the plane from the back - then you can do primitive grey scale leaving them at 1/4 1/2 etc too!
@@foldionepapyrus3441 Unless I am mistaken, the current method would fail mechanically if you snuck in and changed the state of one ball by hand.
A belt drive would make it faster too. And if the switches were ramped, all you would have to do is set the position as you pass and the switch would slide into the correct position.
@@bkuker Indeed, as it currently stands it is mechanically flawed, being easily externally driven and probably unable to deal with the fact - the arms might manage to bulldoze the linkage back to the expected state, but its clearly not designed to do so.
But move to something very much harder or even impossible to back drive and having a remembered current state means no mechanical reset, clutch/ratchet or sensing type system required. So on my inclined plane idea - I was thinking driven by screw thread - you can set the height up the slope and need no reset to change it correctly to the next grey level you desire.
what you should do is make the input levers independent of current state. so, as the servo slides by, it'd pas cleanly over a dot that was already in the right place, but index one that wasn't. like a pin in a track, using the lead screw's own motion to slide through
Absolutely this.
yup, better idea
You could do faster switching if you made a ramp mechanism that the servo selected and moved across the balls (like a railroad switch, but the switch/rail is what is moving through the row of balls) ... Would also probably eliminate jamming as well since the servo would be selecting the ramp between the balls, and the ramps would self-align. (Designing the ramps as 2 alternating contours on a cylinder would probably make for a compact design) ... would have most the advantages of the electromagnet idea.
Ah, I just realized you can build the ramps into the flip-dots instead of the servo, so basically what you have but with angled slots, and have the servo pre-position and move through them! Ideally, no jamming, and no stopping!
I love ping pong balls!
We've noticed! : )
make an even larger display 😜
You are cool and smart
You haven't even seen the whole video it's only 1 minute after upload
@@fatgamer919fan4 they're not wrong though
Were you paid to say that?
@@DylanLisansky I wasn't paid to not say that either
@@baronofclubs I agree
make the servo horn like a ramp, flipping the lever by passing by.
James, that works awesome! The white ping-pong ball completely disappears and reappears as if by magic!
I've been toying with similar idea but trying to do gray scale. Instead of black or white, each pixel is a cylinder of black to white gradient. Pixel axis is vertical as to take advantage of gravity and friction to maintain its rotational position.
As the gantry moves at constant speed horizontally, the servo arm would catch a half disc on top of the cylinder to rotate it. By retracting the servo arm just at the right time, each pixel could be set to desired gray scale. To rotate the pixel the other way, we would rely on the gantry moving the other way and again using the servo arm to catch that pixel to rotate it the opposite direction.
I've only modeled it in Fusion and have not printed them. I suspect there are tons of issues that I have not tought of yet. When I saw your black/and white pixel, I realized that's what I should have done before tacking gray scale. Very nice. I love it!
whenever you do sponsors its like you have a gun to your head lol
@Ankit Meher Just the way he speaks i guess
I guess he's just too monotone, it looks like unmotivated ad
i was hoping youd do something like a combination lock where only one rotational input can set different discs to different angles when i saw in the thumbnail "one servo" but this is still pretty cool
What if the servos had a "gear" on them instead of an arm? You could pass cleanly through all states of the actuator at that point and just rotate clockwise or anticlockwise as you need, since the gear has equidistant teeth all around!
This is the best idea I've read in the comments yet. This allows you to move much faster as you both don't need to pause or have a gap for the servo to reset as you described, it also lets you move the motor off of the moving carriage. They could sit right next to the ball screw motor. Those gear teeth could simply run on a splined shaft.
If you flipped your matrix, you could make a 7-segment display !
It takes balls to make a display like that
7 and a half balls, to be precise.
I’ve always wanted to try making a fishing line based grid display. Each row and each column having a servo controlled fishing line. If both the row and the column are engaged a third “actuation input” connected to all the dots could do the actual flipping. This way multiple dots could be flipped simultaneously with each tick of the clock.
Writing the prioritization algorithm would be a delightful hell.
It would be interesting to use two motors for X and Y axis control and then a single motor as the "change" actuator.
He 'forgot' to mention that Fusion 360 is FREE for personal use. I can not recommend it enough.
What's your recommendation?
I once saw a window display in the Museum of Digital Art in Zurich that has an interesting vertical column of rotatable cells. Each column has multiple dots, each having two sides. Each column is driven with only one motor and the linking mechanism is similar to a flip display. With only one motor, it is able to index the entire column (despite very slowly) to a given pattern.
I'll leave the exactly implementation down to your imagination.
Another nice example for mechanical multiplexing mechanism can be numbered wheels to make numeric combinations by rotating numbered wheels with a multiplexer mechanism it uses 2 motors, 1 for linear displacement and the other to rotate the wheels which will have a geared perimeter. So when you align the selector mechanism with each wheel it engages the teeth of the selected wheel, then turn the selector shaft, selecting a number (could be a letter or any other thing)
Core-xy gantry moving on the back of the entire system, single servo flipping bi-stable dots by giving em a push without potential of binding. Would be fun. Updates a single dot at a time.
Belt drive for the carrage. Some kind of sliding wedge arrangment so the carrage motor sets/resets the dots. Use solenoids not servos (not to push/pull but to select set/reset). If you stagger the actuation point of the dot in a coloumn, you could get way with only one solenoid per coloumn.
I love it, a great challenge would be to get down to one servo on a 10 by 10 display!
Cool idea. There's no need to remember last positions if you leave gap for servos to be in the middle always, then the walls for on/off can be in reach of servos arm, turning all the way right or all the way left. The no need for intermediate step, just return to center previous to move them.
Wow. That's brilliant! Nicely done.
To increase efficiency and speed, you can connect strings to each of the flip-dot pixels where the other end of the strings are attached to a smaller matrix of mechanisms so that the servo motors travel less distance horizontally to flip each pixel. Basically, the large display gets projected to a smaller display.
In the current design, a major limiting factor for efficiency is the size of each pixel and as the overall display it is scaled up in size, the efficiency will decrease by a lot. Thus even if you make a much larger display, with this new design, you can actually make it faster than it is with the current smaller display. It would be kind of like a projector that outputs pictures and videos onto a much larger screen.
Since the strings can only be used in tension, the ping pong balls will have to be defaulted to one position using extra weight so they are not balanced. Then you can 3D-print a small and simple bi-stable mechanism for each pixel in the small projected matrix that is switched using the lever arm of the servo motor. The bi-stable mechanism is so that when the pixel is white, it will be in one position and when the other position is chosen, the pixel will flip. The weight is there so that the pixel will flip back to white using gravity. Since the string would not be able to push the pixel to flip back to the other side, gravity will automatically pull it down when the bi-stable mechanism is switched by the servo.
In conclusion, you would still be using the same mechanism to move the motors, but at a smaller scale so it is more efficient and faster even for a larger display.
if you had two "u" slots you could pass the horn through either "U" since the state is fully open or fully closed not in between. this would allow you to move the ball from either state and pass through without jamming.
For a pingpong ball based display you could just put an axle though their centres and paint one half black then switch them by turning them 180 degrees. Could be built quite compactly.
Was thinking of a slightly different approach. The idea would be for the lever in the back to have an angled surface, such that as the control plane in the back passes by, it only needs to have a "finger" held out. If the finger is held out high, it would push the lever away revealing white (and, if the lever is already away, there's no contact so we're good). Or, if the controller held out the finger in a lower position, it would drag the lever back towards the controller revealing black (and again, if the lever is already back then there's no contact).
Couple of things I like about this. First, you no longer need to know the prior state of the display, because the action is idempotent: you only need to know where you want each pixel to be. And the individual fingers need only bear load primarily sideways: they can be weak and geared for fast travel. Which means you can invest in only the one big motor to push the control bar itself, and that thing can shoot the control bar quickly from edge to edge.
With careful design, you could cause the fingers to work correctly when engaged in either direction. Think of the lever as just a popsicle stick: on the top plane of the lever is an arrow head pointing towards the control bar, such that hitting it as you pass by either way will push it away. And there's an arrow head on the bottom as well, facing inwards towards the pixel; the finger on the bottom would be crooked upwards like an L, to engage that arrow head.
James, if you turn each of those lever slots into an hourglass shape (turned on its side and open on each end) so that it catches the servo horn as it passes by, you don't need to pause in between each - you can just fly across them quickly. This also solves any issue of them being in an unknown state if manually changed while the actuator isn't directly over and the physical model mismatching the data model. If you're worried about catching/jamming - should be easy to put a small ball bearing on the tip so that it rolls across the hourglass shape.
What about having the actuators having long arms that are actuated from a centrally located point? In that way you reduce the travel distance of the column of servos. For example, each actuator would "reach" towards the middle, instead of being actuated in line with its column.
You could build it with a mechanical OR gate or AND gate and combine two adjacent Dots. This should effectively cut it into half. This would also be a good way to look into how mechanical computing works and would be a fun way to show logic and how you can do computing calculations and displays.
You could create a 'crane' component for your Great Ball Machine, using the multiplexer to control x, z and grip axes, with the sequence:
x-> ball pickup x
z-> ball pickup z
grip-> closed
z-> travel z
x-> ball release x
z-> ball release z
grip -> open
z-> travel z
repeat
More vertical rows could be supported w/ the same number of servos if u put extended levers on the second set of rows and position them at the halfway point between current levers. Or really, if such vertically extended levers are workable, u can at least triple the # of rows with same # of servos by adding rows both above and below and putting them at the 1/3rd and 2/3rd points.
Before hydraulics, old machinery like cranes and diggers used the mechanical force of the engine pull a series of linkages and cables, with a series of clutches. You could do something similar
I immediately thought that this would work great for a flip-clock style display, or even alphanumeric display (like the old ones at airports/train stations). So instead of servos, use steppers so you can rotate the flip display enough many steps to show the correct letter/number.
It would be interesting if you could swap the little lever are for a eight sided piece on the three motors, that way no matter which way it turns it will always have the same orientation.
It won't be as compact but you can at least not reset the motors between columns.
You could continue to use the mechanical method of flipping the ball with the servos, but also remove the need to remember the state and whatnot. By making the receiving gap for the servo arm wider, and then returning the servo to a centre position after it sets the state?
What about using a Geneva Drive for coupling the servos to the FlipDots? That would allow you to refresh the "screen" faster, because you wouldn't have to align the servos with the dots they are approaching.
Not sure if you mentioned it but solenoids to flip each element would be instantaneous.
Always amazing what you can do. Im still fighting my way through one of your other arm projects, you make it look so easy :)
How about adding a vertical threaded rod on the carriage and moving a servo up and down.
The have two magnets on each end of a doubled ended servo horn: One magnet to set dots, one to unset them. Then you can extend the both axes forever without needing anymore servos.
You could use a gear to send output to each switch instead of a stick. Of course that'd necessitate a new mechanism, but what's to be expected?
Very clever! I'd like to suggest an idea to eliminate the need to move the levers between each column. If the flip mechanism were replaced with one that could be driven by a cam rather than a lever, you could use the same gear design you had in the previous build and just give each one a half turn to toggle between white or black. Since the teeth on the last design meshed nicely as it moved, this could eliminate the jamming concern and also make the code simpler since it would only need to rotate a half turn in any direction regardless of whether it needs to turn a pixel on or off.
Can you do a mechanical multiplexer on the vertical axis as well? I can see that working if you use electro magnet
Easier would just be to have extension levers from a single servo that could hit any of the three rows, but stagger their horizontal placemen so that at any particular horizontal position the servo would only hit one of them.
I'd make 2 changes:
First for the X axis I'd use cograils and have the motor be on the moving part. Much cheaper than the drive spindle. The encoder can be replaced with an end switch and a light gate switch that is triggered in the middle between each position. Then a simpler and cheaper DC motor can be used.
Then for the flip mechanism I'd use dc motors driving either a rubber wheel or a magnetic rotor. That way they wouldn't need to know the current position. Alternatively 2 electromagnets pulling a iron part on the lever either forward or back can be used if the travel distance is small enough.ac
One could reduce the number of servos by having the servo connect to a peg per row, horizontally staggered. I was also thinking that one could eliminate the servos entirely if the mechanism were designed so that running the lead screw all the way to the left would force all of the ping pong balls to one state, and otherwise each ping pong ball would be tripped if the lead screw moves past it right to left. To draw a screen, run the lead screw all the way to the left, and then run it to the right, but zig zag back to hit all of the balls that need to be tripped.
Put a ramp on the servos, which can either point inwards or outwards. The movement of the carriage will then push the ramp against the actuators to flip the balls. Advantage : can be fast, continous movement. Will not jam.
Interesting concept! I would design the linkage interface so that it can flip to 2 states but with clearance for a servo middle state which leaves it unchanged. Perhaps that just requires you widen the gap that the servo horn slots into.
*Arbitrary numbers* say the action requires 60 degrees of servo stroke, let the final 10 degrees in either direction be the flip action, but the middle 40 degrees to be the neutral state. This way your algorithm doesn’t need to save a memory of the column and change state to it as it passes (especially if they are to be left unchanged). The runtime can greatly improved if the algorithm goes: index to next column->flip necessary dots->back to neutral->index (repeat)
please for the love of god make a version where you exchange the servos for electromagnets
i think you are really on to something great here
it could be 10 times faster using electromagnets and you could really make a cheap and still somewhat fast flipdot display
you could probably make a 32x16 dot display which would be a really cool showpiece
At some point to one is just making a CRT. I think keeping everything to mechanical actuation is that cutoff point. So motors are cool with magnets as long as they drive stuff with their output.
this is the first video from you i have watched in years. boi, has your presentation style changed :D
i was quite shocked ^^
also rocking the gray hair now :D
man, time goes by so fast...
Thanks - I changed the format at the start of the year. Views are a little better!
A faster arrangement would be to place servos along two of the edges. For a 10x10 display, you would need 10 servos for the x direction and 10 for the y direction. A servo on a specific row can flip all of the pixels on the row, but only if the column is "unlocked" by a column servo. This is still a lot less than 100 servos.
You may be able to increase the vertical pattern by having more slide linkages sandwiched in the width of each pixel then using ramps that don't care what starting lever position comes by, only changing if change is called.
This is useful for an earlier idea I had where small drawers pop out as needed in a wall of drawers when you need a place for something then again when you need the something.
Switching the leadscrew for belt and pulley (stepper). Would increase your refresh rate ;)
Wouldn't it be possible to have a sliding mechanism to tilt the points?
For example, two (or more) slots at each point that push it to the 0 or 1 position when the servo arm passes through? Then you could set the arm as it moves through the gap and let it pass through the respective slot. This might even allow to build it so that you don't have to save the current position of the point (if you have more than two slots).
One thought about the servo hooks... if you created two sets of hooks on each pixel, rather than just the one. white-to-black is handled by one half-hook, black-to-white is handled by the other half-hook. Then you could move to the "to-white" hook for a column and actuate the pixels in one direction, then the "to-black" hook for the same column, and actuate those. You wouldn't need to have knowledge of the current state of each pixel, and you wouldn't have to move any servo arms that don't need to be changed... this i think would simplify the code a bit. You could just move the gantry down the line, actuate all white pixels in a column, move, actuate all black pixels for that column, move, repeat...
maybe ramp the gates on the back of the dots, so just moving the main axis will switch the display to whatever state the servos are in.
How about a coreXY gantry that pushes a convex button toggle that flips the half ping pong ball on or off. It could be relatively fast and by using a convex button it could turn it on or off from any direction. The tool head would have to go up and down. Hopefully the tool head turns the convex button on by swiping past it, rather than it having to pulse up and down to turn the button on or off. Great Video, can’t wait to see the next one!
Is a genius engineer who solves incredible problems using maths.
> Counts, 1, 2, 3, 5, 4, 6
A 3d printer gantry (corexy or croxy possibly) on it's side to go over each ball that's not in the state it needs to be. Geared for speed as it doesn't need high accuracy like a 3d printer. Then use a single electro magnet to flip it. I bet the gantry doesn't even have to pause in places so would think this could go very fast (even though you can't do a row at a time). You can create different patters for the update which might look really cool.
Steampunk features flip displays and the mechanical multiplexing makes that seem more plausible. You could have pneumatic actuators riding in carriages using a mill drive train and pneumatically controlled transmission to drive the carriages, all controlled by a paper strip reader. Hypothetically, that could have an application near MRI or NMR using the nitrogen gas release to drive it. Obviously, you wouldn't use a paper strip reader in the application, but could have a small number of remote, pneumatic inputs without any electronics or magnetic materials inside the field. Obvious downside is that it would be slow and noisy.
If the pixels were disks instead of balls so they could rotate continually through off/on every 90° then you could have a continuously moving arm with no jam risk. Just extend the servo at any point after the previous collum and before the next one.
How about a piston display? It would be good for things like displaying webpages and ebooks in braille if it were massproduced and small enough, and could even have pressure sensitive touch capabilities. But i'm only asking if you would be willing to make a demo of it.
I have an idea for another multiplexer project, but it's a lot of work.
Do you know what in music production a sequencer is? You could make it move a device just like this display, but instead every pixel is a switch.
Such a sequencer would store your manual switching positions and be able to store and load saved presets.
But you would need to work into electronic music a bit. Maybe a collab with a musician?
The code/refresh could be made more efficient by looking ahead and comparing the current state to the desired state and if you have already completeted your refresh, you could jump to either end without pausing, you could also go even further than that and look ahead to each column and check to see if a state change is required by comparing the current state and the required state and jump straight to those columns, saving more time and increasing the refresh rate efficiency again.
Good video. I have an idea. Consider a two dimension matric of small solar cells with concentrating lens or cones. This array would have to be tracked to the sun position very accurately. The mechanical multiplexig arrangement could adjust each solar cell. What you would have would be a relatively small amount of silicon generating optium output. Also, the array enclosure would not move, unlike conventional trackers where the panel has a large range of motion. Been sitting on this idea for 20 years. When i first saw your video on mechanical multiplexing i though it was a fit.
What about adding a circular motion to the linear axes. Like a clock. It will add to the reach from 1 direction (X) to 2 directions (XY). With the cost of just 1 motor which will turn the axes like a clocks hands.
What if each ball had a mechanical latch, like a click ink pen? Then you could use the servos to just punch to activate the mechanical toggle of each ball. Even a solenoid could do that.
This kind of 2 position switched movement could be a great application of a 3D printed flexture. I wonder if you could shrink or simplify a pixel using one?
What if you use a 3-4 arm hook and two channels on the flipper? The hook could stay in movement and not risk of getting caught.
I think you would be interested in Clearpath brushless DC servo motors. You could use two to make a gantry for this project and move it around to a specific segment and use a regular servo to move said segment. Edit: they also move pretty fast with precision.
Great as always James! 👊 I think that the best practical example of a mechanical multiplexer I’ve seen is the MMU2 by Prusa
I think it would be super stratifying to see this run without pauses.
Why do you stop between each column to change the servos? They change so far you could just do this without any pauses in the horizontal movement.
2:09 Why would you put the gears outside the radius of the pingpong ball like that? There's loads of air just on the other side of that wall they are attached too at this timestamp.
what if you had multiple gears in a row linked to each dot in such a way that in both positions they are clocked in a way that an independent drive gear could slide past each one in either direction and drive each dot to the desired state. the trouble then just becomes how would you create such a drive train efficiently and compactly. also, the actuation mechanism should have a bit of a bistable restoring force to lock it into one or the other state. then you could also possibly introduce more states than just two to introduce more possibilities in the display. maybe something like having multiple colors not the surface of a drum or sphere that get exposed for a certain angle. these are just my thoughts
Well you know what to do next. 5x12 setup to run a clock. It should be able to refresh once a minute easily
An alternate could be a linear actuator with a solenoid on the end to toggle each half ping pong as it moves down the rail.
If you added a second hook on the back and had the first one it use being the first hook in off position, then surely servo position would be simpler as you could have It straight up everytime
Make a physical display, that can represent full RGB Color. Sort of like E-Ink, but James Bruton.
I've thought magnetically charged balls painted in an RGB gradient, then spun by magnets. Not sure if that'd work, but it'd be cool as hell
Technically it's actually a mechanical demultiplexer. As a demultiplexer is a combinational logic circuit designed to switch one common input line to one of several separate output line
You only need two motors and one servo. Use each motor as either x or y and then you only need one servo to get it to work and you can scale up as much as you want.
How about make one but that can display in 3D? Like each pixel would be a needle and could be pushed out to a specified value.
Yes, you could extend it out another five and have this one go five more rows across... Or you could have another five, and have a second mechanism coming in from the other side. Then your refresh rate is doubled.
Excellent
Really interesting concept. Good job!
now how would you make a 2d display with a single servo? some sort of mechanical charlie-plexing?
1:42 "WERE YOU ABOUT TO CALL ME AN ASSHOLE?!"
Barely related, where do you find the cheapest servos/ other electronics in the US?
What if the "pixels" were controlled by mechanical AND linkages, and there was one actuator for each row/column?
Would it be possible to make a 360° or near 360° multiplexer?
A Drink mixing robot that has a variety of ingredients to choose from and Archimedes screws or another portionable System for delivery.
I believe you could avoid the logic for remembering the column's previous state by redesigning the hook mechanism and the horns on the servos in a way that the these would always be set to the next columns state and only switch the position of sets that were in a position different than the expected. A solid inverted pyramidic shape comes to mind for the ball mechanism, and then a matching shape attached to each servo...
Cheers!
Pneumatically addressing would allow it with only compressed air and an addressing system.
I was wondering why you didn't use half white half black painted ping pong balls that would rotate instead of having to flip in and out allowing for the structure to be thinner.
What about a robot that has several degrees of freedom but only 1 or two servos/motors? One to decide what joint, pully, gear, etc. to move and one to power that movement. It would move very slowly if it was a walker, but it mmiiiiiight work...? Sounds challenging at least!
Is this inventor fusion? I draw in both inventor and solidworks,both have features I like
It's Fusion 360
What about using one servo and an X Y gantry on the back?
turn it into a digitalish flip clock project
10x10 might be relatively easy using coils, neodynium magnets and shift register chips.
the best mechanical multiplex is Armatron!!! Please do a newer version of it!!!!