Author: Andrei
3/02/2019
Fidget spinners were everywere one year back. It was an explosion of these things. But this is not a normal fidget spinner. It has POV display integrated. POV stands for persistance of vision. The LEDs are blinking very fast in the same exact position, and the persistance of that blink will create shapes in the air while the fidget is spinning. By taht we can create text or other shapes. The more LEDs has our POV display, the better would be the "resolution" of the letters.

SeanHodgins YouTube channel presented his work on this project. The PCB has everything it needs to create the POV effect but it is also in the shape of a fidget spinner and has a place for a 22mm bearing.

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He sahres the PCB design as well. In this photo we can see the sjape of the PCB. It has 3 arms equally spaced wo it will spin without shaking. On the Arms there are some 3V cell battery sockets and that's how the PCB is powered on. There is a microcontroller, FTDI programmer and a USB connector so this board could be programmed in Arduino IDE. He also made the code so it could display text while spinning.

To syncronise the spin, it needs some magnets and some hall sensors. There are 2 magnets on the stator of the spinner and some hall sensors on the PCB. When it spins, it can syncronise the spin by detecting those magnets. Interesting, right?

He also made a 3D printed case for this board so it will look better. The plastic knob is also printed and the small neodinium magnets are palced on these supports. The board uses bery small SMD components so it might be a bit tricky to solder. For more details, check his channel on SeanHodgins and see more of his videos. Thank you.

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