splitflap

Building Split Flap Displays. Started 18 months ago and kept me on a super interesting learning path. First shot was using open source designs (https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap), but then kept building more and more parts myself. Coming from a software engineering background, getting into designing mechanical things – and then more importantly the electronics around it - has been really challenging, but also very rewarding. At this point I have my own screen printed flaps, custom PCB Design and a, what I consider, really smart protocol that allows me to daisy chain a basically arbitrary number of display elements. It's fun!

I'm building a collator robot [0] to help me pack items I sell for building your own open source split-flap mechanical display [1]. I get custom character flaps printed and die-cut in bulk and then sell them in smaller sets. A full set of flaps for one module has 52 distinct designs (letters, numbers, symbols, etc) and I get them from the manufacturer grouped by design, so they need to be collated to sell as packs of 52 with 1 of each design. My WIP robot will take a stack of one design and distribute them to a bunch of cubbies, then I'll swap in the next design, and so on, so each cubby ends up with a full set. It's based on a cheap ~$110 CNC gantry frame from AliExpress and a ~$35 BTT SKR Pico 3d printer main board running GrblHAL. To detect whether the flaps feed successfully I use a visible light break-beam sensor (the typical IR sens

I was looking at these the other day - in the process of browsing around the subject I found this maker-project to create custom ones: https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap

Scott Bezek has a great video on "How a Split Flap Display Works" [0]. He also sells blank "flaps" on Tindie [1]. The documentation on how to build the Split Flap is also really awesome [2], including how to cut your own flaps [3]. I've been following this project for a while. It's pretty awesome. I estimate about $10 per character (as opposed to the $180/character (!!) another poster mentioned through Alibaba), with a large portion of the cost being the custom cut "flaps" (in small quantities). It seems like the cost could get in the $2-$4 range per character but I couldn't figure out how to do it without a significant amount of labor involved in cutting the flaps. FYI, there's also a company called Oat Foundry that sells large split-flap displays [4]. I seem to remember the cost being in the $10k+ region but I don't see a price and I co

There's a great Github project for building your own Splitflap/Solari displays from the ground up for $20 each https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap Right now it's focusing on 40-character flaps (not super convent for clock-making), but it's open-source so I'm sure you could modify it for your purposes with some effort.

There's a great Github project for building your own Splitflap/Solari displays from the ground up for $20 each https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap

Currently using an IR reflectance sensor and a hole on the spool gear - you can kind of see it here: https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap/wiki/Electronics The sensor is mounted on a PCB that can be physically shifted to apply minor adjustments to the home position. The adjustments could easily be done in software, but doing it physically "stores" the adjustment parameter for each module without having to reprogram the controller.

As a hardware side project I've been designing and building an open source split-flap display - the kind of electro-mechanical displays you used to see in train stations and airports that loudly flip through letters and numbers as they update. https://scottbez1.github.io/splitflap/ Have a few working prototypes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bslkflVv-Hw), but I'm currently redesigning the electronics/PCB to make it easier for hobbyists to build (i.e. avoiding tight pitch surface mount components - https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap/issues/12), and I'd still like to figure out how to make them cheaper to build in small quantities.

DIY open source hardware split flap display: https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap It's one of those cool mechanical displays that were common in train/airport terminals before digital signage took over. Demo video of my prototype so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bslkflVv-Hw