Persistence of Vision Display

Although all photo-emitting displays rely on human eye/brain persistence of vision, some exploit it more than others. When it comes to hobby projects, there are very few feasible display options. One tedious option is a rectangular matrix of LEDs. The overhead of soldering each LED becomes a major component of the project with clever multiplexing and LED driving methods becoming a secondary task. One of the other options for a hobby display is to spin a single row of LEDs to make a display that truly relies on persistence of vision. The projects described here subscribe to the latter display method to produce 2D and 3D displays.
Cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions raster an electron beam (3 beams in most color CRT televisions) across a screen of fluorescent material(s) exciting the phosphor's electronic state. Once the phosphor relaxes a photon is released. The lifetime of the material's persistence is one to two orders of magnitude faster than the raster period. This is an example of a 0D updating element creating a POV 2D display via 2D translational motion. A pulsed laser with a 2D galvanometer is another example. This project takes a different approach and makes a 2D POV display using a 1D updating element, a line segment or curve of LEDs, and 1 axis of rotation. This method can create finite surfaces with two degrees of freedom. Specifically, this project makes a simple finite plane display.