Scanwheel is a drum style mechanical television you can build yourself
This article provides a guide for building a 'Scanwheel,' a mechanical drum-style television using a Raspberry Pi Pico and various electronic components. It details the hardware requirements, including stepper motors and LEDs, and explains the software implementation using PIO hardware.
Why it matters
It showcases the intersection of retro-mechanical engineering and modern micro-controller capabilities for hobbyists.
Scanwheel is a drum style mechanical television you can build yourself.
It features five windows side by side, each taking advantage of the same scanning drum, but with separate LEDs to allow separate images. The windows are a luxurious 9mm x 8mm each, with 20 scan lines.
The software uses the Pico's PIO hardware to drive the LEDs, allowing extremely high horizontal resolution, so the image quality is a lot better than the 20p line count would imply.
There's an accompanying video showing the build process, with footage of it in action.
Symbol Technologies 21-02485 stepper motor Old but still widely available online. It has an unusual wiring setup, but it can be used as a bipolar stepper motor by cutting the white wire before it goes into the 4 pin connector as described here .
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