POV Display Using Arduino

The word POV stands for “Persistence of vision”. A POV display is a virtual display that create an illusion of different picture, text and graphics. In other words, the rotating LEDs of a moving system will make an illusion of some text or object. This visualized illusions are called POV display.

The main working principal of POV display is the illusion of LED. When a number of LED rotate in high speed, it create an illusion. This illusion may be an object or picture. This virtual display has a specific starting point. To indicate the starting point in the POV display, you can use a sensor (Like IR sensor). Also there is a need of microcontroller to control the LED. A dc motor is also required to rotate the whole circuit at a high speed. This rotation will create the illusion, which is known as the POV display. Read More >>

Components -

1. LED
2. Arduino nano
3. DC Geared Motors
4. Ir sensor
5. Jumper wire
6. 3.7V Battery

At first take five LED and one Vero board. Then put the LEDs in the veroboard one by one. Once you have done this, take the soldering iron, and then soldier the LEDs in the veroboard. After this, you have to short all the negative pins of LEDs. After shorting all the negative pins, take a single piece of wire and connect it with the negative pins of LED. Also use some more pieces of wire to connect it with the positive pin of LED. Then connect the other end of the wires with berg strip. By using this berg strip we can further connect the LED with arduino nano. This is all about the connections of LED. Now you have to move to the next part. Read More >>

Now take the circuit of LED, and fix it in the one side of wooden piece. Make sure that everything is placed properly, so that no vibration will come at the running time. After this connect the arduino nano at the other side of wooden piece. You may also use arduino uno instead of using arduino nano. At last take the jumper wires and do the connections as mentioned below.

Connection of Arduino in POV Display –

1. Positive pin of LED1 – D2 pin of arduino nano
2. Positive pin of LED2 – D3 pin of arduino nano
3. Positive pin of LED3 – D4 pin of arduino nano
4. Positive pin of LED4 – D5 pin of arduino nano
5. Positive pin of LED5 – D6 pin of arduino nano

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In this section, I will let you know all the important steps regarding the coding in arduino nano. At first connect the arduino with your computer, and then open the Arduino IDE software. Now you have to do the coding in arduino. The sample code for POV display is given below.

int delayTime = 1;// you can change character formation spacing in other word you can change size of a character
int charBreak = 2.1; // you can change space between two character
int LED1 = 2;
int LED2 = 3;
int LED3 = 4;
int LED4 = 5;
int LED5 = 6;
int sensor = A0;

void setup(){
pinMode(LED1, OUTPUT);
pinMode(LED2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(LED3, OUTPUT);
pinMode(LED4, OUTPUT);
pinMode(LED5, OUTPUT);
pinMode(sensor,INPUT);// infrared sensor or hall effect sensor
}
// binary code for each character
int a[] = {1, 6, 26, 6, 1}; 
// for example, for character 'A' binary code is (00001 , 00110 , 11001 , 00110 , 00001 )
// where each bit light up one LED, where first 5 set of bits represent
// led to be light up in first line 
// in case for character 'A' first set of bits are (00001)
// so led will light up in a patern shown below:-
//LED1  off
//LED2  off
//LED3  off
//LED4  off
//LED5   on

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To calibrate the IR sensor, we need to calibrate the potentiometer of the sensor. Before it, put a black line just below the IR sensor. It will help us to calibrate the IR sensor more easily. Change the value of potentiometer as per the requirement.

After calibrating the IR sensor, put the power in the motor and run the circuit. Now you can see the rotating LED will show the particular text, which you have written in the code. For better observation, you may start the experiment in a dark room. That’s all about the POV display. Hope you like the project. Read More >>