Maker Faire 2014: Stroboscope

Last month I organized a small workshop in Tokyo HackerSpace about reusing the motors inside an old DVD drive.

In that workshop, I explained how to control DC motors, spindle motors, stepper motors as well as other devices using an Arduino board. However, we didn't have time to actually prepare some cool project with them. I got inspired by the stroboscope at elabz, so I decided to make my own. It took my about 1 day and a halft to complete it, this is the result:

Let's take a look at the components:

• Transparent acrylic base: based on the meArm v0.4 design, and I used a laser cutter for cutting it.
• LED lamp: I got it from a 100yen shop and cut off the USB connector.
• Spindle motor: I salvaged it from a DVD drive.
• Electronics:
• Right: a breadboard version of Arduino (very simple to create)
• Down: USB-Serial converter used to download my program to the Arduino board.
• Up: the spindle motor driver (a 4xhalf H-bridge driver SN754410)

Then, I printed the animation frames provided by elabz and cut a black thick paper following it.

My stroboscope worked almost without problems (apart from having to change the batteries) for two days, and attracted the attention of many visitors. That was very rewarding.