Sometimes looking at a progression is fun. I knew early on I wanted a way to secure the PCBs inside the tube, especially since there will be two slits, one for a USB connector and the other for the SD card. It took a military show to made me realize what I needed: a sabot. So several hours later, I have a prototype with a buddy of mine to be printed. This fits inside of a 7/8" ID tube. There’s a notch on the other side that fits the rocker switch on the outer tube. That will prevent it from rotating inside the tube.
That looks great.
Some days I wish there was a 3-D printer in my house, but don’t let my 11-old hear me say that; it’s already all I can do to keep her from hacking in to my bank account to order one.
I’d use one of the local makerspace printers, but they’re not open at the crazy hours I suddenly need it, or more realistically, I’m not quite ready to leave a post-it note on aforementioned daughter’s bedroom door “Dear Kid, It’s 2:15am. Have gone to makerspace, back by breakfast. Love, dad.”
SO ANYWAY, I really like that design there and it’s inspiring in all sorts of ways. Thanks for sharing it!
I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while now too, but I could never justify it. It’s an investment and other than making little stuff, maybe my daughter would use it too, there was no ROI on it. In fact, if I were to let my daughter use it, it’ll be running as an expense only, buying spools of material. But, recently I started looking more closely at them again. It’s amazing how much has changed in the last 12-24 months.
Wow ashley, we’re on the same track. I’ve been working on a similar approach for mine, same deal, round sabot type thing. O-rings to keep it together and seal it inside the tube.
I don’t want to seal it in. The notch in the back will slide around the ON/OFF switch so it won’t rotate, and there’s stuff on either side holding it in place. If I need to remove it, I can.
I’m taking a little bit different approach, trying to get some playa-proofing in there. All connections on the end of the tube, and then a disc sitting on top of that to push the power button. All other switches are capsense based.
Very much enjoying your project, you do a hell of a lot better job documenting than I do. The EagleUp pcb model looks great too.
Yeah, I have capacitive sensing on for the next revision, together with, at least a single axis accelerometer (since that’s really all you can measure from something that’s spinning relative to the ground: the relation to gravity.) I do have a 9DOF that I’m going to play with as well … it’s a bit of an overkill, 6DOF is enough but hey, why not. 
That will allow me to spin the thing any which way with all sensors working.
This will have a rocker switch as ON/OFF. Those two tactile buttons (with yellow stems) are for control. The one closest to the edge is a START/STOP trigger, so the performer can turn it on and get on stage, then push START to actually start the unit displaying stuff and STOP when they want to stop it (right now a stop will also reset the unit back to the first image on the list, on purpose.) The other button is an interrupt based brightness control (currently only based on the setBrightness() call … I’m making due with the fact that I’m losing colors.)
I need to re-engineer the LED strips, both to make them shorter, and to add the capability to do current fading. Which would mean adding 6 digitally controlled resistors on each IC. That’s going to be fun.
I’m keen to have everything running off a sealed-in BTLE-capable arduino, using an iPhone for control. Denounce logic? Who needs it!
None of the BLTE modules I’ve seen have the necessary stacks that I need. So while that’s a great idea, it doesn’t work for me.