I thought I’d try to show the latest revision of one of my art projects in video form. At first I tried an old webcam (LifeCam VX-3000) with bad results. Then I decided to use my digital camera. With the current memory card it can record up to 5 minutes of video in Quick Time format. I added a pan and zoom effect using Windows Movie Maker (available in Win 8, not 10).
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In this rare view of some of my gear (doesn’t it look atrocious?) we see a military-green piece of equipment in the middle serving as a signal source to the display module (upper left). The gray cable carries the signal, a serial signal needing only 3 wires plus ground, with a fifth wire providing power to the display. The pattern generator creates an 7-or-8-bit-wide pattern which is monitored on its own local display, then serialized in the top part and sent through the five-wire cable. The pattern generator can also encode the 3 signals into 2 signals and send them out using four wires plus ground. This allows for very long cables.
I want to make this the standard for how my displays work, and this is the first time I have all the parts in the chain up and running.
The display looks cooler than the halting, grainy video conveys. And that’s only one set pattern. The possible variations are infinite. Now that I have all the basic pieces in place, I will be converting more of my older displays to work with a serial cable, and finding better ways to take videos of them so you can see how they really look.
Here’s another video I took after building some more pattern-making equipment.
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