Split Flap Display
By Andrew Gregory. Posted
Split flap displays: they’re a brilliant bit of retro technology, existing long before LEDs, OLEDs, 7-segment displays, and other modes of showing information. And yet none of those has the same majestic click-clack sound that a split flap display does. Maker Morgan Manley always wanted one of these for his desk, but most split-flap displays are large, loud, and have a load of wires hanging out the back – Morgan wanted something neater. And so he created this: a compact, modular and fully enclosed display.
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Each module is approximately 40 mm wide and 80mm tall, so the full eight-module device is only 320 mm long in total. The modules fit together with only a four-pin connector between each module, and it’s powered via a USB-C power adapter.
The build is controlled by an ESP32 board in the leftmost module – all the other modules connect to this via I2C. As the drum within each module rotates, the flaps fall and show the character printed on them – each module displays 37 characters. On a technical note, this is wonderful – the fact that it’s modular makes it so easy to think of use cases with fewer modules, and from the evidence of the video Morgan’s made it’s comfortably quiet enough to sit in our office.
Features Editor Andrew trawls the internet for Cool Stuff while keeping the magazine running smoothly.
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