Fairly standard LED POV display using 24 blue LEDS and a PIC18 microcontroller.
If i was to build a newer version of this i would definitely use surface mount LEDS, shift registers, and make the whole things generally more sturdy, but for a first attempt it works (quite well until the zero position sensor moves...)
All the images are held in bit field arrays, so it can hold quite a few pages of animation/images before the memory is full.
With more people starting to follow this project, i guess it's time to start improving and rebuilding parts ;)
I think this unit has reached it's bodge limit, so i will probably need to go with a whole new version. This time i'll use a plastic support (less chance of severing a finger while it's running), powering the display without having to spin the battery, and either getting the images to the display by sd card, or some kind of serial data link. If i feel brave enough to do the extra fiddly soldering i might even use surface mount parts to minimise the visible circuitry.
This is really cool. Do you think you could try turning it into a Kerbal Space Program NavBall? I'm sure the KSP community would go nuts for it, being so much cheaper than mechanical alternatives.
Interesting idea, if I can get a reliable signal to the spinning globe I don't see any reason why not. Hopefully V2 will be a bit more compact, maybe with a smaller, lighter ring so it's not so dangerous ;)
Apparently there are such thing as 'spherical displays' that use fancy lenses and projectors and a sphere is of diffusing glass. I think this might be a little more feasable though...
How did you do the wiring to the spinning part? Your PIC and power source is outside the sphere, right?