A few weeks ago my ridiculous kilopixel wooden pixel display went a little crazy on the internet. I wrote about the response and the experience as a whole, and feature some of the art that was drawn on my display.
Thanks for thinking through it! I've found that moving left-right is a little noisier and has a little vibration - up-down is smoother. However, it's not that noisy and it'd be fun to experiment with different algorithms for finding the next pixel.
I think the issue is that I'm streaming to disk with ffmpeg and recording at 5 fps to save space. OBS must be locked to the same frame rate since it's sharing the webcam?
My original concept included two webcams, one for OBS, one for ffmpeg. Guess I should have gone with that!
Pretty quiet! I spent some time figuring out how to make sure the stepper motors don't whine (the answer is microstepping and decent motor controllers). The pixel turning is very quiet unless it misses slightly, then it makes a clunk.
This is incredible! I can appreciate how much work it took to make this happen. Well done!
I was recently in the presence of some linotype machines from the 1800s and it's so good to be humbled by the achievements of people who came before us. That machine was so complex, I could barely begin to figure out how to manufacture one. Your discussion of looms reminds me of that!