Shoutout to YG for getting us in touch with Andrew! and Cheers Andrew! keep an eye out on the flip dot project early next year :) Checkout the playlist of this years #YTMakersSecretSanta! for all of the vids. im working on a bit of documentation on this as we speak so keep a lookout, as it has all been very last minute this build hahaha
I can't wait to see the rest of your experiments with flip dots ! I also want to make games with this type of display ;-) But your window display is going to be epiiiic...
@@ThisOldTony Sam bought the screwdrivers home and they are absolutely wonderful. Very tactile. I was trying to persuade him to give them to me, now I’ve read this I assume 1 is for me 😂. His mum also wants a set of steak knives. Keep up the great work!
@@MrThisuldo Good on ya, Sam's dad! Oh, and thank you for letting him use your garage to build a flamethrower organ that one time! Wait, what do you mean he's never told you he built a flamethrower organ in your garage?
@@spookyfm4879 the true of it is he waited for us to go on holiday then sent us videos of him almost setting light to the house. Neighbours loved it though! 😂😂
ToT: "these strippers are much worse than a dedicated one, much more like a pocket knife version, but should work well in a pinch" LMNC: "WOW these are so much better than my teeth!!"
@@mattwerner523 I stripped wires with my teeth since I was 9. From then, my teeth are shaped like a wire stripper, with a special spot for wire with different diameters, so I can easily strip wires with almost no effort.
As a member of ToT subscriber expedition i assure you that when it comes to wire strippers, you are wrong handed, they were totally meant to be on this side, no doubt in that, there were no mistakes hidden by grinding that surface on that side.
That would make an interesting daylight supercomputer panel. Possibly just randomly selecting a row and column and toggling it based on its existing state stored as a single memory bit in RAM?
I bougth my first flip dot pannels because I wanted a graphic output for my electromechanical/transistorless computer 😀 Though at about 25 instructions per second, it wouldn't qualify as "supercomputer" at all.
no, it's a host/slave system, USB. you also need a new USB jack. but you can make a mouse, keyboard, midi controller and so with a Arduino and control your computer. You could use I²C or SPI to make 2 Arduino communicate with other, but also that is master/slave system, UART gives some options.
Those flipdots are pretty cool. At first I thought those screwdrivers where chisels for carving wood, maybe it’s because of style of packaging and the wooden handles.
Cool, Sam. These displays were popular in the 1970's and 80's on game shows, like the U.S. Family Feud or Family Fortunes in the UK. It's nice to see you can still get them for projects. I prefer the "eggcrate" displays used on the U.S. Price Is Right - some of which are still in use, even today, after decades.
Part of the masterfulness of this work, are those little details, of prep / organization- ie - tape to hold down the wires so they stay still while you work on 'em, or work on the logic on them. Gosh in is the details, Maestro.
Xyla's had a lot of thought put into it as well! Those are all definitely my favorites this year (plus I also fell in *LOVE* with the leather tool/purse Jimmy -wasted on- made for that Becky gal!)🤣❤️
I became fascinated with flip dot display when I would go to work with my dad. He was a bus driver in New York and these flip dot displays were part of public transportation everywhere. Thank you so much for taking the time to show how these. 🙂
I came here from "This Old Tony". I did know of your channel, again thanks to Tony but, as I already have so many channels I try to keep up with, I decided that I didn't need another but, upon coming back for the secret Santa builds, I find you working on a pipe organ! I spent 15 years as a pipe organ builder and loved every minute of it (right up to the time my knees wouldn't let me crawl around under the chests. Needless to say, I'm subscribing. Looking forward to more organ and, to be honest, I've never watched one of your videos that didn't entertain and educate me, so am looking forward to all your content.
I absolutely love the flip dots. LOL Ultra low res 2-bit graphics. :D And since it retains the state when powered off - it's shares some kinship with e-ink. :)
The organ looks beautiful! The one I worked on has been complete for a while I think, I haven't been back there in some years to see. The flat screws were fun to work with to say the least 🙃
4:40 oooh that’s awesome!! That’s a flipdot bus display from the Belgian public transport company (De Lijn), I worked on a project for them to connect these displays to the backbone system. 👍🏻😄
This prompted such wonderful nostalgia for one of my favorite uni projects. I turned an FPGA and an old VGA monitor into the 16-color aliexpress knockoff version of Mario Paint. With switches to control the cursor just like you used. Was it a productive use of resources? Hell no. Was it fun? Hell yes.
For the flip dot displays for the front of the museum if you are having trouble with the speed and number of IO required it may be worth looking into FPGAs, rather than running software they configure their internal components to create custom hardware. A major advantage is they are essentially just digital circuits so everything happens concurrently, you can have every IO pin doing its own thing with its own timing at very high speeds usually. They also tend to have a large number of IO pins.
You and Tim hunkin need to hang out. He's like a force of nature. And it's hard to imagine the modern maker community without his influence over the past decades. he's the only other person I can think of who has something of a diy "museum". But in his case it's an arcade made up of some of the most ridiculous and crazy awesome machines you've ever seen. (That he built by hand.)
🚂🎄 Excellent, Excellent, Excellent ! A trip to the UK and the Museum is being planned for the springtime ! Thank you for an excellent video ! Merry Christmas ! 🎄
Started with TOT, had no idea it was apart of something larger! Over an hour later and I'm here. I hope next year you bring on more creators to extend this chain!
@@TheHappygreenfrog Do you have any recommendations on where to buy them in the US? The only old stock ones here are from Luminator which has very little documentation out there to control them.
Once I saw you playing around with the flip-dots I instantly thought of programming the game "snake" on the Arduino. Then you just need to connect push buttons and arrange them in a cross for up-down and left-right. Maybe an idea for another project with the flip-dots.
Damn! You have a good flip-dot supply man. I've been drooling for a good set. So much cooler than e-ink. Mechanical engineers feel like these displays communicate how much more "environmentally friendly" we are than other engineering disciplines. We don't JUST burn rocket fuel.
Great use of a flip dot panel. I bet there’s a whole bunch of kids, and a few adults, out there that would love one of these. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Maker Secret Santa time! Truly, the most wonderful time of the year. This project was flipping great! And your reaction to the screwdrivers was priceless. Thanks for sharing!
That etch a sketch is so incredibly cool. I'm gonna be a dad soon and I want to give the little guy access to electronics projects like what you do. I'm just starting to learn how to use arduinos and stuff now but at times it seems like too much brain work for someone as busy and as dopey as me to learn it. Baby steps.
I was just thinking about how these have interesting failure modes, as the buses local to me waited until they’d failed to replace them with amber LEDs, then you realised you had a slow one! The ones which took a few seconds or even minutes to finally flip were funny, as well as the ones which got stuck halfway or even other fractions of a turn. Some flickered on and off which I suppose was a localised coil failure. I did miss the readability, but while these were used I was always thinking how a rotating fabric indicator was nicer for text. Somehow London still uses those for buses even long after everywhere else has switched away, including the Tube. So these things were in an awkward place where I only started to appreciate them once most were replaced with dim, more pointlike, amber LEDs.
I've often wonder why this type of display had a slow draw rate. Thanks to this video I now know why. Reminds me of the 1970s and 1980s game show Family Feud that used these type of displays.
I became a subscriber of yours because of the gift exchange with This Old Tony. I've been enthralled by your creations ever since (especially the museum counter). It's been a great year :)
Honestly there's some cool potential here. Final evolution would be to shrink the pixel size / increase PPI and then maybe some kind of service that changes the artwork daily. Is there any way to potentially have more sides to the pixel? like a cube that rotates on one axis so you could have 4 colours per pixel, added complexity though because you'd need a way for the device to know if the pixels have rotated or it could end up out of sync
Came here from ToT's channel, love your videos so far, subscribed right away. I find new channels every year from this Secret Santa list, hope you all keep this up and grow the group every year. Merry Christmas from the US, looking forward to watching more.
There's some surface level similarity between this way of drawing to the display and a CRT, which should mean that that it would be possible to adapt Ben Eater's breadboard graphics card to drive this display, and that sounds like a lot of fun
I definitely want to see that. I found Ben when that exact video showed up in my recommended videos. I've got a bunch of his videos saved to playlists I need to watch.
Shoutout to YG for getting us in touch with Andrew! and Cheers Andrew! keep an eye out on the flip dot project early next year :)
Checkout the playlist of this years #YTMakersSecretSanta! for all of the vids. im working on a bit of documentation on this as we speak so keep a lookout, as it has all been very last minute this build hahaha
the plan is to make a screen next year out of them all so it can be multipurpose. roughly the same resolution as a gameboy per window
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER thats awesome!
If you can, rip some Pokemon Intros or something and play them on there! I think that would be hella cool!
I can't wait to see the rest of your experiments with flip dots ! I also want to make games with this type of display ;-)
But your window display is going to be epiiiic...
Hey guys... Any friend of YG is a friend of mine. Flipping awesome project 😄
@@OriginalMorningStar Oh, a fellow flipdotter ! Hi J !
you're a freak'n genius, what a great project idea!
Thanks for the screwdrivers Tony. Really thoughtful gift and my dad is extremely envious. He is coming over just to look at them haha. Thanks again
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER I'm glad I sent 2!
@@ThisOldTony Sam bought the screwdrivers home and they are absolutely wonderful. Very tactile. I was trying to persuade him to give them to me, now I’ve read this I assume 1 is for me 😂. His mum also wants a set of steak knives. Keep up the great work!
@@MrThisuldo Good on ya, Sam's dad! Oh, and thank you for letting him use your garage to build a flamethrower organ that one time!
Wait, what do you mean he's never told you he built a flamethrower organ in your garage?
@@spookyfm4879 the true of it is he waited for us to go on holiday then sent us videos of him almost setting light to the house. Neighbours loved it though! 😂😂
ToT: "these strippers are much worse than a dedicated one, much more like a pocket knife version, but should work well in a pinch"
LMNC: "WOW these are so much better than my teeth!!"
LMNK*
ey that's pronunciated "teefs"
As a 40 year EE, I've stripped wire with my teeth quite a bit.
🤣😂🤣😂🤣
@@mattwerner523 I stripped wires with my teeth since I was 9. From then, my teeth are shaped like a wire stripper, with a special spot for wire with different diameters, so I can easily strip wires with almost no effort.
As a member of ToT subscriber expedition i assure you that when it comes to wire strippers, you are wrong handed, they were totally meant to be on this side, no doubt in that, there were no mistakes hidden by grinding that surface on that side.
Nope, no mistakes have ever occurred in a ToT video. He's kompletely flawless in every way.
@@Phroggster To even suggest it is inkonsiderate and frankly a little offending.
Absolutely none indeed. Also those are high quality
Beats using your teeth! 😆
@@Pouncer9000 I kan see what you did there.
Toni: "The wirestrippers aren't that great" LMNC: "Way better than my teeth do it" This make me chuckle. :D
Omg right. Its so hard to get out of the habit of using teeth for wires 😅
@@katherinecaldwell3753 they work so well!
Thank you Sam! We love the flip dot etch-a-sketch, lots of fun! Happy Christmas & we can't wait to see your giant flip dot wall!
-Ruth & Shawn
I just subscribed to you guys. I'm surprised I've never heard about your channel.
@@commodoresixfour7478 Well it's great to have you here!
- Ruth
🥰🥰🥰🥰
That would make an interesting daylight supercomputer panel. Possibly just randomly selecting a row and column and toggling it based on its existing state stored as a single memory bit in RAM?
I bougth my first flip dot pannels because I wanted a graphic output for my electromechanical/transistorless computer 😀
Though at about 25 instructions per second, it wouldn't qualify as "supercomputer" at all.
When are you going to enter in the secret Santa?
@@squirlboy250 Maybe I should just do it with another E-youtuber.
Kinda wonder if it's possible to implement a USB mouse driver on the Arduino so that you can make the world's worst MS Paint.
well it will be with the museum window screens as they will be screens in essence.
best*
no, it's a host/slave system, USB. you also need a new USB jack.
but you can make a mouse, keyboard, midi controller and so with a Arduino and control your computer.
You could use I²C or SPI to make 2 Arduino communicate with other, but also that is master/slave system, UART gives some options.
I want to play flip board snake at the museum so badly
Belgian busses! 😁👍
First Xyla, then Jimmy, then Becky, then Tony and now, LMNK ⚙--> LMNC. Merry Christmas 🎄
wow the museum is gorgeous, what a great building
It's a snazzy one! Lions on top too I painted em gold
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER Until today, I had not realized the museum was protected by lions. Pure class, that! And now in gold.
That's a perfect display for a game of "Snake"
Also, I love the sound and the anologe feel of it.
Those flipdots are pretty cool. At first I thought those screwdrivers where chisels for carving wood, maybe it’s because of style of packaging and the wooden handles.
I wouldn't mind staring at (and listening to) this flipdot in a dentist waiting room... So cooooooooo😎
That's the purpose of my project : GropXL ("big pixel" in English), plus you'd be able to control it with your smartphone !
Cool, Sam. These displays were popular in the 1970's and 80's on game shows, like the U.S. Family Feud or Family Fortunes in the UK.
It's nice to see you can still get them for projects. I prefer the "eggcrate" displays used on the U.S. Price Is Right - some of which are still in use, even today, after decades.
Gotta make the original snake game on those flipdots for the front of the museum!
Part of the masterfulness of this work, are those little details, of prep / organization- ie - tape to hold down the wires so they stay still while you work on 'em, or work on the logic on them. Gosh in is the details, Maestro.
Out of all the secret Santa’s, yours and TOT’s presents were the best. You guys did a fantastic job thinking these through to make them personal.
Xyla's had a lot of thought put into it as well!
Those are all definitely my favorites this year (plus I also fell in *LOVE* with the leather tool/purse Jimmy -wasted on- made for that Becky gal!)🤣❤️
You should combine your telephone exchange and have a dial-in game of snake controlled by touch tone
Mount it on the windows facing outside so people waiting to get in can play 😀
That's more or less what I suggested initially 😀
What sexaul screwdriver sounds.......check
Flip dots look amazing
Those Groans were not put on I'll have you know
This old Tony gave a really thoughtful gift 💝
What a flipping cool invention.
Flippin flipper would be flipped proud ?
Flip yeh !
Pun central hahaha love it
Colin's Bass Jacket is what introduced me to this channel 👍
Flippin 'eck !
So many cool things to do with 'em.
..and the sounds !! yumm.
I became fascinated with flip dot display when I would go to work with my dad. He was a bus driver in New York and these flip dot displays were part of public transportation everywhere. Thank you so much for taking the time to show how these. 🙂
I came here from "This Old Tony". I did know of your channel, again thanks to Tony but, as I already have so many channels I try to keep up with, I decided that I didn't need another but, upon coming back for the secret Santa builds, I find you working on a pipe organ! I spent 15 years as a pipe organ builder and loved every minute of it (right up to the time my knees wouldn't let me crawl around under the chests. Needless to say, I'm subscribing. Looking forward to more organ and, to be honest, I've never watched one of your videos that didn't entertain and educate me, so am looking forward to all your content.
That is absolutely gorgeous and seriously needs to be made into a giant snake game.
My first thought
I honestly had no idea how amazingly engineered "flip dots" were. Seriously, that is some really optimized mechanical tech. Pretty cool!
I absolutely love the flip dots. LOL Ultra low res 2-bit graphics. :D And since it retains the state when powered off - it's shares some kinship with e-ink. :)
I've never heard someone this satisfied with the feel of a screwdriver
when u use a screwdriver that fits the heads perfectly you'll know xD
He got a little TOO excited for some audiences...
th-cam.com/video/eVwc4DZbcoE/w-d-xo.html
I bought these screwdrivers after watching this.
I gotta say, I was just as satisfied!
@@Android811 nice
When Rick shows Morty true level
You got the best gift of all of them. The only thing I'd even want.
Nachts im Museum.... Who Is Afraid Of Ghosts @ Night in the museum? Verry Cool Flippy Display!
It's incredible seeing how many tools and equipment you own, that you lack basic essentials like good screwdrivers! That was a very appropriate gift.
Idk why, but there is something deeply satisfying about watching those dots flip like a wave.
Both you and Tony absolutely nailed it!
You made a really nice gift! And I'm quite jealous of the screwdrivers TOT made you. Lucky bastard!
The flip dot demo with the 3 wires reminded me of a speaker working. By reversing polarity to move the cone in a out.
The organ looks beautiful! The one I worked on has been complete for a while I think, I haven't been back there in some years to see. The flat screws were fun to work with to say the least 🙃
4:40 oooh that’s awesome!! That’s a flipdot bus display from the Belgian public transport company (De Lijn), I worked on a project for them to connect these displays to the backbone system. 👍🏻😄
more details please !!!
This prompted such wonderful nostalgia for one of my favorite uni projects. I turned an FPGA and an old VGA monitor into the 16-color aliexpress knockoff version of Mario Paint. With switches to control the cursor just like you used. Was it a productive use of resources? Hell no. Was it fun? Hell yes.
For the flip dot displays for the front of the museum if you are having trouble with the speed and number of IO required it may be worth looking into FPGAs, rather than running software they configure their internal components to create custom hardware. A major advantage is they are essentially just digital circuits so everything happens concurrently, you can have every IO pin doing its own thing with its own timing at very high speeds usually. They also tend to have a large number of IO pins.
Haha, all the numbers on the song display for the organ = A funny number - 1! I love it!
You and Tim hunkin need to hang out.
He's like a force of nature. And it's hard to imagine the modern maker community without his influence over the past decades.
he's the only other person I can think of who has something of a diy "museum". But in his case it's an arcade made up of some of the most ridiculous and crazy awesome machines you've ever seen. (That he built by hand.)
Your brain, this flip dot screen and some synth cv interface......
I can’t wait!
I could listen to that sound forever.
🚂🎄 Excellent, Excellent, Excellent ! A trip to the UK and the Museum is being planned for the springtime ! Thank you for an excellent video ! Merry Christmas ! 🎄
Nice little Easter egg @ 12:27. I won't spoil it for everyone else with the details. Made me smile.
Started with TOT, had no idea it was apart of something larger! Over an hour later and I'm here. I hope next year you bring on more creators to extend this chain!
This is amazing Sam!
I used to work for Hanover.. great to see you reusing the older tech! i always loved the sounds of the flip-dot displays
I still work there, I have a bunch of the individual 'rows' on my desk for fun.
@@TheHappygreenfrog Do you have any recommendations on where to buy them in the US? The only old stock ones here are from Luminator which has very little documentation out there to control them.
Once I saw you playing around with the flip-dots I instantly thought of programming the game "snake" on the Arduino. Then you just need to connect push buttons and arrange them in a cross for up-down and left-right. Maybe an idea for another project with the flip-dots.
Snake, Tetris AND Breakout !
Damn! You have a good flip-dot supply man. I've been drooling for a good set. So much cooler than e-ink. Mechanical engineers feel like these displays communicate how much more "environmentally friendly" we are than other engineering disciplines. We don't JUST burn rocket fuel.
Love the sound of the entire board switching! 🤓
"That's well better that my teeth do it" 😂
yeah finally can retire the gnashers
I love that sound. The buses in Toronto used to use those and that sound is missed.
Great use of a flip dot panel. I bet there’s a whole bunch of kids, and a few adults, out there that would love one of these. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Brilliant! Never knew about those flip dots!!! Very creative - awesome present to gift them!
I wonder if these are what inspired the technology for DLP? That's really awesome!
It's actually quite satisfying to watch them.
Happy Christmas, Sam and Flippy!
This is cool! I think Family Fortunes used to use these for the board during the Monkhouse/Bygraves/Dennis era.
4:00
I did not expect a christmas video rambling on Flip Dot Displays to finally explain how negative voltage works.
Hollow ground for use on hallowed ground. Nice!
Maker Secret Santa time! Truly, the most wonderful time of the year. This project was flipping great! And your reaction to the screwdrivers was priceless. Thanks for sharing!
Imagine my surprise to see my hometown featured! :D I always wondered how these worked. This is an awesome gift.
That etch a sketch is so incredibly cool. I'm gonna be a dad soon and I want to give the little guy access to electronics projects like what you do. I'm just starting to learn how to use arduinos and stuff now but at times it seems like too much brain work for someone as busy and as dopey as me to learn it. Baby steps.
Omg, getting this to play "the game of life" would be awesome. Not the board game, the one done by some scientist in like the 50s or 60s
As a Belgian from Brussels, i find it very funny to see that the bus you took as an example runs only a few hundred meters from my house. 😅
I was just thinking about how these have interesting failure modes, as the buses local to me waited until they’d failed to replace them with amber LEDs, then you realised you had a slow one!
The ones which took a few seconds or even minutes to finally flip were funny, as well as the ones which got stuck halfway or even other fractions of a turn. Some flickered on and off which I suppose was a localised coil failure.
I did miss the readability, but while these were used I was always thinking how a rotating fabric indicator was nicer for text. Somehow London still uses those for buses even long after everywhere else has switched away, including the Tube. So these things were in an awkward place where I only started to appreciate them once most were replaced with dim, more pointlike, amber LEDs.
The makers secret santa is one of my favorite things every year, thanks LMNC! :)
I've often wonder why this type of display had a slow draw rate. Thanks to this video I now know why. Reminds me of the 1970s and 1980s game show Family Feud that used these type of displays.
I'm so glad to learn in not the only one that strips wires with his teeth :D
I found this channel because of this secret santa biz and I'm happy it's still going- found all y'all because of this and Colin's channel
Magnificent flip-a-sketch, well done! I also love how excited you are about those screwdrivers. Good tools are such a satisfying experience!
That was cool! That screen would be perfect for a super slow snake game!
This looked like a really fun build, and showed some strength of character to actually send it after completing it and it turning out so nice :D
I just got mine working. :) ESP32 and some 7406 hex inverters. The rest is the old driver board for a gultron luminator.
I always wondered how these signs worked. Thanks buddy 👍
cant wait for when we can play bad apple on the museum
TriMet bus cameo! I rode the 19 everyday for years ☺️
Woah! This screen would be perfect for snake game! Just imagine: huuuuge snake field in museum’s window
Some day I hope I can come and visit the museum in person!
Look mom, it is just a microcontroller:). Thanks and entertaining as always. Best regards and happy holidays
best gift out of the series
I became a subscriber of yours because of the gift exchange with This Old Tony. I've been enthralled by your creations ever since (especially the museum counter). It's been a great year :)
This is pretty dang cool.
A new Flipper Zero! Hahaha.
Screwdrivers? I thought they were chisels. Custom engraved, that's a good thing :)
Honestly there's some cool potential here. Final evolution would be to shrink the pixel size / increase PPI and then maybe some kind of service that changes the artwork daily.
Is there any way to potentially have more sides to the pixel? like a cube that rotates on one axis so you could have 4 colours per pixel, added complexity though because you'd need a way for the device to know if the pixels have rotated or it could end up out of sync
Awesome video once again, Great build!
That's awesome! It's like an etch a sketch
That is so cool. Looking forward to seeing the larger scale version.
love the sound of these!
great buld
M8 I felt that screw come a loose with that nice driver (11:08). damn I'm jealous!
I remember those, someone did Bad Apple with them, if you're doing a whole wall that would be amazing.
Great vid! Introduce a awesome new product and easy to understand in depth explanation.
this is the coolest one in the series, love your stuff
Now i want to play a game of "Scamble" on a flipdot display...😁
There are so many games to play on Flip Dots !!!
Came here from ToT's channel, love your videos so far, subscribed right away. I find new channels every year from this Secret Santa list, hope you all keep this up and grow the group every year. Merry Christmas from the US, looking forward to watching more.
i'd love to see a collective video of all of you reacting to these making-of videos!!
There's some surface level similarity between this way of drawing to the display and a CRT, which should mean that that it would be possible to adapt Ben Eater's breadboard graphics card to drive this display, and that sounds like a lot of fun
I definitely want to see that. I found Ben when that exact video showed up in my recommended videos. I've got a bunch of his videos saved to playlists I need to watch.
Im not gonna lie. Your project blew my mind. I wish i understood electricity better.