Would it be hard to make a basic POV system with an arduino micro and a meter of 144 lights?
Shouldn’t be. I’m developing on a Micro. And I made custom strips with the LEDs 1mm apart, or about 167 per meter (though I’m only using 48 pixels.)
I kinda got one working with that setup. I’m not much of a coder so it was pretty rough.
Awesome I may look into it haha thanks
Not that hard once you understand Brett. Assuming the strip will be vertical, you’ll have to think in columns. How well it projects depends on the speed at which it moves (or the viewer moves.) If it’s moving at a high rate, then you need to flash columns rather fast so the image remains compressed. On the other hand if it’s moving slow, then flash slower so you don’t compress the image too much.
Just be aware of the PWM rate of the LED driver that you’re using. The WS2812s have a 400 Hz rate. The LPD8806s have a 4 kHz rate. Slower rate can make me dizzy. The slower rate will be very visible in a POV project.
Oh yes, that too. I use LPD8806 on my POV design. The WS2801 couldn’t keep up …
@Ashley_M_Kirchner_No does the faster rate get rid of the problem or does it just make it less visible? There is crazy flicker when I move the WS2812s.
Doesn’t go away, but it’s way better. With the WS2801 you can clearly see the dots. With the LPD8806 I would have to be spinning really fast, way faster than anyone would want to, to see the dots. But the other issue with any of the WS28x series is their update rate. I can’t push data to them fast enough, they just fall apart under 5ms per column update. With the LPDs I can push data out as fast as 200usecs. I haven’t tried faster because really you wouldn’t see anything. 
What If I want to put it on a wheel of a car? Could that work? Idk about Power tho
Use a slip ring for power. You’ll have to be creative how to get wires there. But it may only really be visibly at low speeds.
Low speeds such as below 20?
You can probably go faster than that. You’ll just have to try.
A company makes a rim car kit for like 2400.00 lol check out the Adfruit bike pov system if you wanna check out my code let me know. It might help.
I wonder if they have any kind of detailed pictures that one could copy from. Might be worth checking into @Brett_Hansen
Cool thanks guys I’ll b looking into all of it haha
If I had more then one strip couldn’t that make up for the slow chip in theory
Not really. I have four in the POV tube, it still looked horrible with the WS28x. Which I’d also why I only spend about a week with them before I swapped them out.
Hmm well I mean more like 5 spokes on a wheel so they can do different parts of the same image maybe I’m thinking wrong
I suppose that’s possible, but if one fails you just lost part of your image. With five of them, you can lower the brightness.