Window Display

SpokePOV kit for bikes

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jsburakoff
 
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Joined: Wed Jun 16, 2010 1:50 am

Window Display

Post by jsburakoff »

I'm thinking of making a window display for cool lights like this for a bike shop. Basically, I'll be rigging up an ac motor to a single speed wheel and letting it go all night.

The catch: I'm new to this kind of thing, and I don't know much about any possible safety issues. Is there anything I have to worry about as far as fire hazards? Are there specific motors that would be better when left untended? Are there more energy efficient setups that you guys would recommend? Would it be above newbie grade to set it up to go on for a minute, turn off for a minute, go on... etc?

Sorry for the generic newbie post, but I figured you guys would have this info in your head-boxes if anyone would.

Thanks,
Jim

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Window Display

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

I'd stay away from "universal" motors or anything with brushes. Besides being loud, they aren't really designed for continuous operation. A small induction motor should work for you.

It won't take much to keep the wheel turning once you get it up to speed. But if you want to start and stop every minute or so, you'll want a motor with a little more power for the acceleration. A little too big is better than a little too small. An unattended but over-worked motor could be a fire hazard.

Implementing the on/off sequencing would be pretty simple with an arduino and a solid-state relay.

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toddfun
 
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Joined: Sun Nov 16, 2008 5:24 am

Re: Window Display

Post by toddfun »

I built this for testing and programming on the bench, but it would make for a great display rig 8) .
SpokePOV_test_rig.jpg
SpokePOV_test_rig.jpg (61.37 KiB) Viewed 1914 times
In this video on my blog site, the fan motor is loud and gets hot because I used a junked-out 15 year old ceiling fan but if you used a new ceiling fan motor it would be very quiet and could run as a display for years I would think. The video doesn't show just how good the image looks, it does look much better to the human eye than to a camera.

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