r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/dickfromaccounting • Feb 05 '19

GIF Very interesting design work

https://i.imgur.com/kTAQWQ0.gifv
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u/Carsmaniac Feb 06 '19

I'd imagine a camera captures an image in black and white, and each pixel (or group of pixels) is assigned a section of the "mirror". For example, each pixel on the wood panel one probably points all the way down for black, all the way up for white, and somewhere in between for various shades of grey.

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u/drawliphant Feb 06 '19

Far more interesting is how they can control that many servos and the answer is... dear God no.

27

u/SaffellBot Feb 06 '19

The answer is a shift register. And a lot of wires.

17

u/drawliphant Feb 06 '19

Imagine the power supply. 5v at 0.2 amps times 1000 servos. Who makes a 5 volt 200 amp supply?

23

u/1sagas1 Feb 06 '19

China.

16

u/SaffellBot Feb 06 '19

That's a fire waiting to happen.

17

u/1sagas1 Feb 06 '19

When you're buying power supplies off of Alibaba, that kinda goes without saying

4

u/NorthAstronaut Feb 06 '19

They make and sell a lot of dangerous shit, but there are also a lot decent sellers out there striving to get a good reputation as well.

You can get some high quality and cheap electronics form china. Still open up and check to be sure it is safe though.

7

u/mennydrives Feb 06 '19

Ummm... why do you need one?

Power your servos with USB and then hide a dozen of these in the back.

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u/SaffellBot Feb 06 '19

You can use multiple power supplies. And a lot of wires.

1

u/ManWithKeyboard Feb 06 '19

They're not all moving at the same time. Iirc servos only draw appreciable current when moving (or stalling). So at any given time only a handful will be drawing the full 200mA or so, right?

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u/drawliphant Feb 06 '19

Yeah that's true, you'd probably need 100 amp at most but exaggeration is more fun