Scanwheel is a drum style mechanical television you can build yourself

https://github.com/AncientJames/Scanwheel/

Comments

mikewarotJul 26, 2026, 2:35 AM
I was especially surprised when the other LEDs joined into the action, to allow multiple separate video streams... it took a minute for me to grok how it was done.

There's nothing stopping this from being a 360 degree display, if there's enough compute to feed the LEDs the right bits.

If the Stepper motors get hard to source, you could always rip apart a 5v BLDC box fan, and feed the motor 3 phase signals.

iefbr14Jul 25, 2026, 5:01 PM
Unfortunately the video link points to https://example.com/docs
portalcellJul 25, 2026, 5:06 PM
https://youtu.be/41b8fw3_wP8

From git history on the readme.md

jolmgJul 25, 2026, 7:31 PM
Also, the second picture is a video link with the correct URL.
bensmoifJul 25, 2026, 6:40 PM
It's stunning. The video speaks for itself. Please scale this up, like way up back of a truckbed size. This would be delightful to see spinning and running IRL.

Then get a grant and make one as wide as a city street

josh-wraleJul 25, 2026, 5:46 PM
I can see this being applied to hubcaps in the future.
CrzyLngPwdJul 25, 2026, 6:50 PM
Okay, that is genuinely amazing.

Love it, thank you for sharing and for being inspiring :-)

lagrange77Jul 25, 2026, 4:50 PM
Absolutely fantastic!

The video URL doesn't seem to be correct, through. ;)

mysterydipJul 25, 2026, 5:00 PM
> Avoid use in operations.

Oops

lagrange77Jul 25, 2026, 10:49 PM
The video is also awesome!

I had to lol at the doom scene.

pbronezJul 25, 2026, 7:45 PM
How do you get the flashing LED synced up to the spinning pinholes? Maybe the motor provides some positioning feedback so you just have to line it up once…
ThePowerOfFuetJul 26, 2026, 10:27 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepper_motor
lstoddJul 25, 2026, 7:03 PM
about the same idea as nipkow disk

nowadays when people don't want to go the rotating led bar way, which requires very high density led strips (hundreds of ~200-400 mil smd leds) and the accordingly complex control circuitry (basically an FPGA per bar + high speed bus, etc), they do nipkow disk but with individual leds instead of holes. this way you can get away with tens of leds while still having a reasonable sized picture and not that much bandwidth to drive it.

edit: another, less sophisticated take is for example

https://hackaday.io/project/191947-rotating-led-display/deta...

kitdJul 25, 2026, 8:23 PM
I mean if you squint hard enough, it's the same idea as a cathode ray tube. Each hole scans across the "screen" for the desired width, then the next hole down takes over, which does the same. Back in the day, you'd get an interrupt when the reset happened, and you could recalculate your sprite position before the next line got scanned.

Very cool seeing this implementation though. Congrats, OP!

fanf2Jul 26, 2026, 3:25 AM
It’s closer to John Logie Baird’s electromechanical televisor from the 1920s https://earlytelevision.org/baird_televisor.html which was the first practical implementation of a Nipkow disk
lstoddJul 26, 2026, 11:05 AM
Yup. On the mid-tier you have this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoANiFHljGw

I actually have one of those laying around, burned out unfortunately (don't ask).

effnorwoodJul 25, 2026, 7:46 PM
eat it hdmi