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Show HN: I built a JavaScript-powered flipdisc display
- imzadi 2y agoHow do they have no moving parts?
- omneity 2y agoOne could argue flipping doesn't change X, Y nor Z coordinates :)
- dylan604 2y agothat's my question too. if there's not moving parts, how does the disc flip if it doesn't move. if there's nothing moving, what is all of that noise.
- simpsoka 2y agoThe disc moves, but there aren't any moving mechanical parts to cause it to move. It's done with electromagnetic pulses. I'll update it to make this more clear.
- crazygringo 2y agoI don't really see what the distinction is? You might as well say a motor has no moving parts, because it's done with electromagnetic impulses. But that would be absurd. Obviously the hinge of each disc will wear and tear and eventually fail. Buildups of dust and oil will affect them too and prevent them from flipping. Flipdiscs are as mechanical as mechanical parts get. You writing in the intro: "...have no moving parts, near limitless lifespan..." is just not credible. And if I'm being entirely honest, that's where I stopped reading your post, because you simply didn't seem trustworthy. You might want to focus more an accuracy rather than hyperbole if you want to maintain readers.
- beatboxrevival 2y agoProbably because they are just a hobbyist and not an expert in the field (nor do they assert that they are). Maybe be a little kinder on the internet. It sounds like it was just a minor oversight.
- crazygringo 2y ago> Maybe be a little kinder on the internet. I really did think about whether or not to write that last paragraph. But the thing is, it's the truth. And I think it's going to be more helpful in the long run for authors to know these things. Believe me, I've been on the receiving end many times and it's made me a vastly better writer and communicator. When somebody stops reading your article because of a howler, it's much better for you to hear why so you can learn from it. (And you don't need to be an expert in the field to realize that discs that flip are mechanical, or that they don't have a "near limitless lifespan". These aren't exactly subtle mistakes, and it's one of the main justifications presented in the introduction itself.)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- simpsoka 2y agoThanks for the feedback. I've updated the article.
- risenshinetech 2y agoYou're seriously insinuating that a person has to be an expert in the field to be able to identify that a device with moving parts has... moving parts in it?
- lucianbr 2y agoThe entire history of the world stands as proof that focusing on hyperbole maintains readers better :) Though I do wish for more accuracy. These things are totally moving parts, and there is no way they have even a long lifespan, let alone a "near limitless" one. Though to be precise, "near limitless" is meaningless.
- endisneigh 2y agoProbably best to say mechanical movement.
- simpsoka 2y agoUpdated to make this more clear! Sorry for the confusion.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- beatboxrevival 2y agoI've been coveting a Vestaboard, but this seems like a more interesting alternative. Thanks for the guide!
- seanvelasco 2y agoreminds me of a certain art installation at Changi Airport in Singapore. it was the first cool thing I saw in that country
- pvg 2y agoThe beginning of the demo video is reminiscent of Ye Olde Wooden Mirror https://www.smoothware.com/danny/woodenmirror.html https://www.smoothware.com/danny/woodenmirror.html or more recently https://tisch.nyu.edu/itp/news/spring-2024/daniel-rozin--itp-faculty-member--has-mechanical-mirrors-feature https://tisch.nyu.edu/itp/news/spring-2024/daniel-rozin--itp...
- simpsoka 2y agoThat's rad! I didn't know about Wooden Mirror
- tailspin2019 2y agoThat’s awesome. Looks like the wooden pixels rotate to reflect more or less light to achieve various shades of “grey”. Ingenious!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- LordShredda 2y agoI think the javascript here plays a rather small part in the entire assembly.
- nico 2y agoThis looks amazingly cool. Love the old school “analog” feel of it Thank you for sharing
- nayuki 2y agoWell, it's mechanical but still digital. Each pixel is either on or off. Locations are discrete and finite.
- oops 2y ago> Each pixel is either on or off. Or traveling. I imagine if you wanted to you could position the disc at any point between “on” and “off” by constantly flipping it back and forth.
- notatoad 2y agoi'm sure i'm not the only one who wanted this information: >AlfaZeta makes brand new displays, with a controller board. Their XY5 displays (14x28) sells around 500€ (VAT and shipping included). https://hackaday.io/project/159415-flip-dot-display-diy-controller/log/149181-a-bit-about-pricing-and-sourcing https://hackaday.io/project/159415-flip-dot-display-diy-cont...
- carb 2y agoI was about to post the same. The result is really nice, and makes the conclusion make a lot of sense. > I do hope that flipdiscs become more accessible for hobbyists. If anyone wants to collaborate on new affordable flipdisc hardware, let me know! €4500 is quite the pill to swallow (unless prices have gotten cheaper since that 2018 Hackaday project)
- anfractuosity 2y agoYou could also have a look for used bus signs on ebay, or I imagine scrap yards might have them too. I got a 14x20 display for around £50.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cannibalXxx 2y ago[dead]
- BeefySwain 2y agoHow exactly did the author get the panels? I've looked into stuff like this before and it's basically impossible to source outside of things like eBay. Unless you're willing to buy industrial quantities at industrial prices. How did they buy them, and for how much?
- simpsoka 2y agoI got mine off eBay, but you can get the same panels from AlfaZeta. There are some more affordable options like: https://xqd-led.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-936470954-2/Flip_dot_module.html https://xqd-led.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-936470954-2/.... I do mention in my post that I would like to see these panels become more affordable for hobbyists. If anyone wants to collaborate on this, please contact me!
- sbarre 2y agoDo you mind sharing how much the panels cost from eBay? I feel like that's a key data point that would help people decide if they want to explore this further. edit: someone further down the thread discusses pricing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40791049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40791049
- fragmede 2y agoWhat's wrong with eBay?
- simpsoka 2y agoNothing - just might have to wait a bit for them to come up.
- lanewinfield 2y agoSpeaking as someone who also recently purchased these panels (and read the second paragraph where they mention where they got them), they're from the company AlfaZeta. They build and ship from Poland. They don't have a publicly available price list but they cost approx 220 EUR per 7x28 panel. Expensive, but few places still manufacture them. If you continue reading the post, they also link out to other manufacturers including ones on AliExpress that seem to be cheaper.
- jstanley 2y agoWhat is up with the URL?
- qmarchi 2y agoExcellent question, it should probably be changed to https://flipdisc.io/ https://flipdisc.io/ (truncating everything after the first /)
- simpsoka 2y agoSorry, I don't know how that got added. It's https://flipdisc.io/ https://flipdisc.io/
- pvg 2y agoIt's this misline in your html <link rel="canonical" href="http://localhost:4321/ http://localhost:4321/"> HN extracts these.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- proee 2y agoBreakfast studio offers some amazing art pieces using Flipdisc modules. https://breakfaststudio.com/flip-discs https://breakfaststudio.com/flip-discs
- ianbicking 2y agoHaving silver on one side and an abstract/neutral design on the other side is an excellent effect
- beatboxrevival 2y agoLooks like you can get custom colors here too: https://xqd-led.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-936470954-2/Flip_dot_module.html https://xqd-led.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-936470954-2/.... And likely much more affordable than Breakfast.
- amelius 2y agoThey have a work that shows melting polar ice, but I wonder how energy efficient it is (I expect it does not consume energy when nothing flips, but still ...)
- dtagames 2y agoAmazing art from this studio! If you like this stuff, check out their "brixels" pieces like the one titled Ocean for the new Fontainebleu Hotel in Vegas
- ape4 2y agoWhats the expected lifetime for a flipdisc display like that
- simpsoka 2y agoover 150 million operations on average -- from alfazeta documentation
- its_ethan 2y agoI was curious roughly how long 150 million operations is... Assuming (literally just a guess) that the tiles "operate" at a rate of 3 times per second playing back a video or something: (150 million operation) / (3 operations/ second) = 50 million seconds = 578 days It's likely much slower than 3 operations per second too - so probably 6-10x that in reality, which would be on the order of a decade of continuous runtime before they reach expected EOL.
- mmcclure 2y ago> Keeping low numer of controllers on one data line, allows to drive these displays with an increadible speed of 15 frames per second (black – to – white). From Alfazeta's page (including the typos). 15 frames per second feels pretty wild, but would also, unfortunately, change this math pretty considerably if you ran it full tilt.
- its_ethan 2y agoI had originally assumed 15 fps but it did feel a bit too fast.. BUT a 15 fps video being displayed in black and white doesn't mean the tiles will "flip" 15 times per second - a 15fps video could still mean that a tile doesn't flip at all for 50 "frames". It does leave you exposed to the risk of a video where one of these does flip like 12 times in a second for like 20 seconds or something. You could probably analyze whatever video is being played to calculate some kind of like "risk" value or "expected-lifetime-decrease" value to at least better understand what the impact is of the video being played. All that goes out the window when you do the sort of real-time mirroring shown in the article.
- rhaps0dy 2y ago> Flip displays are an interesting alternative. They have no moving parts, What? The display is made almost entirely of moving discs.
- nayuki 2y agoWhere is the obligatory Touhou Bad Apple animation on this black-and-white display?
- sphars 2y agoThis is what I was hoping to see, seems like the logical next step in showing off this awesome project! For the unawares, the original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtutLA63Cp8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtutLA63Cp8 My favorite version, also using real-life objects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT-fdnIK0k0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT-fdnIK0k0 (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39527559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39527559)
- leetharris 2y agoThis is so cool. I love to see Javascript used for stuff like this. It blew my mind that the James Webb Telescope uses a custom Javascript runtime for a lot of the onboard functions.
- spankalee 2y agoThe SpaceX Dragon capsule touchscreens run an HTML/JS app built using web components (Polymer) :D
- bigstrat2003 2y agoThat's horrifying. Javascript doesn't belong anywhere near anything which isn't a web page, and even then it's questionable.
- phist_mcgee 2y agoMaybe the engineers at NASA know what they're doing?
- ClassyJacket 2y agoAs a JavaScript hater, I admit they surely they do, but I'm still curious as to why it was the best choice. If it's a custom runtime, existing runtimes being reliable\secure\well understood by existing engineers isn't relevant. And it's not like they're adding in lots of external libraries either. I found this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19739454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19739454 " The language itself wasn’t so important as having adequate performance, robustness, memory use, reproducibility and extreme QC" but I still don't understand. Interesting they went with a language that doesn't even have integers. At least the comments on this reddit thread have some hilarious jokes: https://old.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/wrtny3/the_james_webb_space_telescope_runs_javascript/ https://old.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/wrtny3/the_jame... Looks like they released a paper, the abstract of which, indicates it's not a fully custom runtime, which would make more sense: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006SPIE.6274E..0AB/abstract https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006SPIE.6274E..0AB/abstra... Unfortunately they want money to read the rest of it and I'm curious but not that curious, and I probably wouldn't understand it anyway.
- scosman 2y agoLove this. Reminds me of the “flip flap” boards in old train stations. Like https://www.vestaboard.com/ https://www.vestaboard.com/
- yojo 2y agoMan I love those things. I have warm memories of standing in Italian train stations as a kid and letting the clacking wash over me when they did a full board refresh. It’d fade out like a rain stick as the stragglers that started furthest from their target letter trickled in. Now it’s all LED, which is way more practical and so much less magical.
- wrs 2y agoI wish they would just fake the sound effect (hey, electric cars do it).
- omoikane 2y ago> near limitless lifespan The lifespan is probably not as limitless as you might have imagined, the discs tend to fall off or get stuck. But they are really neat while they are working, especially how they sounds. I was at an office with these flip dot displays, and eventually we dismantled the display. I took some picture of the pieces and you can see how stuck discs look like: https://photos.app.goo.gl/onpHefUVL8oeP4si7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/onpHefUVL8oeP4si7
- simpsoka 2y agoFor sure. They're similar to butterfly wings. It's easy to lose or break discs. Our kids loved touching them while we were building, and we'd constantly have to replace discs that fell off.
- amelius 2y ago> The lifespan is probably not as limitless as you might have imagined How do you remove dust from them? I imagine that's when they break.
- wrs 2y agoThe linked Alfazeta manual has recommendations for very carefully vacuuming the panel.
- kajecounterhack 2y agoYou can individually remove the discs and use a compressed air cannister, but it's very laborious.
- vasco 2y agoWouldn't you just make the picture change a few times to remove dust and that's it? They flip, the dust comes out.
- garfieldnate 2y agoDoesn't dust usually cling to surfaces due to static electricity and, in some settings, presence of grease in the dust?
- tivert 2y ago> We used 9 Alfazeta panels in a 3x3 grid or 84x42 discs. Each board has (2) 28x7 panels. So how much do one of those cost? The website (https://flipdots.com/en/products-services/flip-dot-boards-xy5/ https://flipdots.com/en/products-services/flip-dot-boards-xy...) notably has no prices listed.
- elaus 2y agoThis [1] page talks about 500 EUR per display which would result in about 3000 EUR for a 3x3 grid or 1.27 EUR per pixel. I love the idea but that's WAY to expensive for me. [1] https://hackaday.io/project/159415-flip-dot-display-diy-controller/log/149181-a-bit-about-pricing-and-sourcing https://hackaday.io/project/159415-flip-dot-display-diy-cont...
- lanewinfield 2y agoEach board is, as of this year, 220 EUR per 7x28 panel. Still expensive! But specialized.
- wferrell 2y agoKath - so cool to see this is you! What a great project. Well done.
- simpsoka 2y agoHey hey! Thank you!!
- dehugger 2y agoThis is incredibly cool! Does the video audio amplify the sound of the discs flipping or are they really that loud?
- simpsoka 2y agoThey can be a little loud, but I find it pretty soothing, tbh. It's sort of like a rain storm.
- yyyfb 2y agoI built a lo-fi device like this (with a LED matrix instead of a flipboard) and I didn't really find great software for building animations at a low pixel count. I ended up doing something super low level where I draw to a buffer directly using ImageMagick. If there's a better library I'd love to know.
- wrs 2y agoThe stack here is lo-res but not lo-power. “…we’re leveraging existing web tech that we’ve found to work well - PIXI for general 2D rendering, Three.js for 3D rendering, Matter.js for physics engine, and GSAP for animations. We also utilize node-canvas, and node-gl for server-side rendering.”
- yyyfb 2y agoI'd be fine with power, I'm running off a raspberry pi that can do all this easily. Still I'm not sure how I'd go about plugging something like PIXI onto a custom display? It draws to a screen from a browser, and I need it to draw to a memory buffer...
- beatboxrevival 2y agoYou should be able to use the library mentioned in the article with a few small modifications to connect to your device.
- brobdingnag_pp 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tailspin2019 2y agoIn a world of flat featureless screens, I really love the physicality of this. Even the noise it makes. It feels like it communicates a lot more than its raw “pixel” count would suggest.
- simpsoka 2y agoI love this and agree. I think having art that bridges the digital/physical divide will only be more important in the world of AI.
- Corrado 2y agoI think this could be useful as a NOC monitor. Mostly the display is static but if something goes wrong the display updates and the noise naturally draws your attention. No “alarm” necessary.
- simpsoka 2y agoI love this idea. It alerts you without the adrenaline spike.
- newaccount74 2y agoPretty sure your brain will quickly associate the gentle sound of the display switching with the dreadful feeling that something went wrong...
- eterevsky 2y agoI was expecting Bad Apple on flipdiscs.
- cperry 2y agoAmazing work, I've long dreamed of building some sort of magical chyron or ticker using flip discs.
- simpsoka 2y agoThanks!! With scenes you could add a ticker for something to this board.
- nayuki 2y agoFun fact: Texas Instruments DLP (Digital Light Processing) are like a miniaturized version of the flip-disc display. But some differences are that flip-discs rotate 180° whereas DLP pixels only tilt a little bit to redirect the light to a heatsink, flip-discs have different colors on each side whereas DLP has mirror pixels, flip-discs probably have finite lifespan whereas DLP is good for trillions of cycles, and DLP responds so quickly (in microseconds) that grayscale is accomplished by duty cycle modulation (PWM).
- hex4def6 2y agoIt would be really cool if you could read out the state of the grid as well. You could then use the display as SRAM. Would look very cool as part of the world's slowest microcontroller.
- IIAOPSW 2y agoAs for what to do next, there is nothing I want more than the old split-flap departure board of Penn Station. It was exactly like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8azGTsslNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8azGTsslNc The clicking, its sooooo satisfying.
- voidUpdate 2y agoI've seen people making custom ones themselves, and its on my todo list of projects. https://youtu.be/K_UEkRFP7fs https://youtu.be/K_UEkRFP7fs was where I got the idea from, but many videos exist
- GalaxyNova 2y agoI've always wanted to build something like this, but I have no idea where to get the actual flipdiscs.
- ElCapitanMarkla 2y agoLove this. I have 2 blank walls in my new office which could do with something like this
- helsinkiandrew 2y agoMike from Mikes Electric Stuff on YouTube, did a very interesting 25 minute video deep dive on flipdots - how they work, patent details, how to drive and get the best performance, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u26N-pQY2U4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u26N-pQY2U4
- rob74 2y ago> flipdisc displays are sort of an obscure technology "niche technology" is probably the better term - that niche being readability in sunlight. A few years ago, flipdisc displays used to be very common in buses, trains etc. Then LEDs got better and the niche vanished...
- nirav72 2y agoIt was going to happen, these flip displays with moving parts probably required maintenance. Also higher energy consumption. Not to mention the noise. I still remember the noise when they use to have these in trains and airports.
- glitcher 2y agoI always liked the clickity sounds of those panels updating!
- jschulenklopper 2y agoOwen McAteer, https://motus.art/ https://motus.art/, @motus_art did something similar with the flip-dot displays from AlfaZeta. I have no stake, but I'm a fan of his work. His code can be found at https://github.com/owenmcateer/FlipDots https://github.com/owenmcateer/FlipDots.
- dmd 2y agoI've got one of these too, albeit much lower resolution. I bought it as a Krush Flip Clock at CES 2016, and wrote a Python driver for it. Looks like it's the same exact protocol. https://github.com/dmd/clack https://github.com/dmd/clack
- noisy_boy 2y agoI have looking for a cheap low-res 18in x 10in display so that I can display stuff to it via Python using a raspberry pi; this is very interesting but its a bit too big and expensive.
- nirav72 2y agoThis is neat. But wondering what the power draw for something like this would be?
- tuna-f1sh 2y agoNice. I also have a fondness for flip-dots. Started with Javascript controller for Hanover bus display (https://engineer.john-whittington.co.uk/2017/11/adventures-flippy-flip-dot-display/ https://engineer.john-whittington.co.uk/2017/11/adventures-f...) and continued with the Alfa-Zeta modules following a commission to make the controller for a 256x56 one - 24 panels! For that I used a Python module (https://github.com/tuna-f1sh/flipdot https://github.com/tuna-f1sh/flipdot) and Python Flask/React based manager, with sequence info in a SQLlite db. Same outcome as your App with pre-loaded transitions and of course, Game of Life: https://engineer.john-whittington.co.uk/2020/04/game-of-life-on-a-flip-dot-display/ https://engineer.john-whittington.co.uk/2020/04/game-of-life... It's my project TODO list to make a FPGA based direct HDMI controller for the Alfa-Zeta modules since refresh rate of the on-board firmware leaves a little to be desired.
- olalonde 2y agoJust so you know, the links in the contact section appear to be broken.
- simpsoka 2y agoOk, thanks for the heads up!!
- garfieldnate 2y agoSo happy to find out what this is! The Meow Wolf in Denver has a huge one of these in the entrance way and I thought it would really fun to build one myself. They have this wonderful clickiness to them, a mesmerizing display both modern- and ancient-feeling.