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Posted by skogstokig 3 days ago

Flipdiscs(flipdisc.io)
313 points | 56 commentspage 2
shermantanktop 6 hours ago|
There’s a very large one of these at “Climate Pledge Arena” in Seattle. Perhaps 8 feet tall and 16 feet wide. Pretty cool, but stuck pixels are even more annoying when it makes you want to reach out and poke them.

I use quotes because it will always be the Colosseum to me, where I saw the Butthole Surfers, Dead Moon and Nirvana. Don’t get me started on the Kingdome.

Brendinooo 59 minutes ago|
That arena famously has dead pixels on its video boards hanging over the ice as well!
helsinkiandrew 4 hours ago||
Mikeselectricstuff did a 26minute deep dive into flipdots a few years ago which is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u26N-pQY2U4
ofrzeta 7 hours ago||
I bought a flip dot display on eBay and now I am stuck with the old thing and my lack of knowledge to make it work. Here's a great resource about technical details (only German though) https://radow.org/flip-dot.php

EDIT: "They have high readability, a long lifespan, and achieves anywhere between 25-60fps" - I think you can't achieve 60fps with a flip dot display.

londons_explore 6 hours ago|
Depends how much power and noise you're willing for it to make!!

Remember that texas instruments DLP technology which is in use in pretty much every office/home cinema projector is effectively micro flip-dots micromachined in silicon, and that can operate at ~10,000 FPS.

ofrzeta 3 hours ago|||
With my rudimentary physics knowledge I'd think that smaller structures can be moved faster than bigger structures.

EDIT: also when you google a bit you can find a guy who maxed out flip dot displays at 30fps (which honestly I thought would not be possible either)

IshKebab 2 hours ago|||
Uhm yeah they are a lot smaller. That makes a difference obviously.
abhiraj_patwa 3 hours ago||
It's crazy that I was trying to find good resources for split flaps and then flip discs just yesterday and was just thinking, damn, there aren't any good or recent information about flip discs, just decade-old proprietary stuff to be found Great work!
nandomrumber 6 hours ago||
That display needs some Conway’s Game of Life action pronto.
test1235 6 hours ago|
they have a gif at the bottom of the article which looks like game of life

https://github.com/simpsoka/office-flipdisc/blob/main/scenes...

nandomrumber 6 hours ago||
Dunno where your link is going, but yeah I see the gif at the bottom of the article now.

Still, I wanna see and hear it on the display.

bovermyer 4 hours ago||
The author mentions SubSpace (the computer game, from the 90s), and the limited pixel budget for player banners in it.

It would be interesting to see if you could run a pared-down version of that game on a display like this.

po1nt 3 hours ago||
I would love to see the cost of the whole hardware mentioned. I guess it would be around a 1000USD
jimnotgym 4 hours ago||
Lookmumnocomputer did some nice work for thismuseumisnotobsolete with flip displays.

See on YouTube or visit in person

grishka 2 hours ago|
If you're into electromechanical machines, he also has a working telephone exchange and a bunch of videos where he restores its various components and explains how it works (I still don't quite understand how it works though). That's the original reason I subscribed to his channel, but his wild musical contraptions are also cool.
b800h 4 hours ago||
Popular in UK train stations until very recently. I suspect that there are still a few out there!
Magi604 7 hours ago|
I'd like to see someone play DOOM (or any game, really) using that flip disc screen!
kelseyfrog 7 hours ago||
I was thinking of Bad Apple!![1], but maybe that's too niche.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtutLA63Cp8

addandsubtract 4 hours ago|||
Someone on reddit did it: https://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/comments/1rcs8dc/flipdot_di...
Magi604 7 hours ago||||
You made me wonder just how often Touhou is even mentioned on HN, so I did a quick search and... less than 15 results! (not counting dupes).

Niche indeed...

gsliepen 4 hours ago||||
I wonder if you could have it play the music as well by the right timing of flipping, just like how the Floppotron works.
jllyhill 5 hours ago||||
The first thing I dig in the article was a search for "bad". Glad I'm not the only one.
a_t48 7 hours ago|||
Not niche enough :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NXSMdUH_Cg
socalgal2 4 hours ago|||
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSeQucVAjLg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ6rfI28zJ4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSdiop75jIg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQVp-srqRBY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJU2-1X8kHQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiFSnoJQU7I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWIKOjGXTEM

albert_e 7 hours ago||
Tetris seems like a good fit -- given the frame to frame changes are minimal adjacent pixels, the responsiveness should be acceptable
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