[ofrzeta]

I bought a flip dot display on eBay and now I am stuck with the old thing and my lack of knowledge to make it work. Here's a great resource about technical details (only German though) https://radow.org/flip-dot.php

EDIT: "They have high readability, a long lifespan, and achieves anywhere between 25-60fps" - I think you can't achieve 60fps with a flip dot display.

[alnwlsn]

They can't if they are wired like they usually are from the factory, because they are wired in a matrix where you can only update one row at a time. They did this to save on IO lines/output transistors, I guess. So you have to wait for the whole screen to finish drawing before beginning the next frame.

But you can flip them fast/in parallel if you have a driver for each disc:

https://pierremuth.wordpress.com/2021/02/17/flipping-dots-fa...

I've been working on one and I have and I am trying to use an H-bridge per disc. It's possible to find very cheap ICs; for my 308 discs, it only cost $10 for these (not counting the additional time/costs that comes with coming up with 616 IO lines, getting a PCB made, dealing with power issues, etc):

https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C5795599.html

[londons_explore]

Depends how much power and noise you're willing for it to make!!

Remember that texas instruments DLP technology which is in use in pretty much every office/home cinema projector is effectively micro flip-dots micromachined in silicon, and that can operate at ~10,000 FPS.

[ofrzeta]

With my rudimentary physics knowledge I'd think that smaller structures can be moved faster than bigger structures.

EDIT: also when you google a bit you can find a guy who maxed out flip dot displays at 30fps (which honestly I thought would not be possible either)

[IshKebab]

Uhm yeah they are a lot smaller. That makes a difference obviously.