“Get Animated” 6ft 3D Zoetrope California State Fair 2010

I got the chance to help build a large 6ft zoetrope for the “Get Animated” exhibit at the California State Fair in Sacramento. This exhibit hall is produced by Stage Nine of Sacramento. The above video was shot in HD on Friday night July 23. I set the camera shutter to frame average at 15fps which is very close to the flash rate of the zoetrope. The camera then “sync’s” the shutter to the stobe flash and you see the exhibit the same way you can see it at the fair (although it is much cooler to see it in 3D. Every now and then the shutter is out of sync so you get a black frame.

Here are some pictures of the mechanism inside.

Internal structure showing the spindle and the roller blade wheels to hold the 6’ platter. The center spindle roller bearing can hold 400#s and the roller blade wheels can hold 100#s each.. The motor with gears can easily start and turn 400+ #'s.

¾ HP AC cap start drive motor with 30:1 gear reduction drives the center spindle. The spindle rotates at ~60rpm.

Zoetrope mechanism with 6ft banquet table as a platter, 3ft block table as the second platter and electronics. We thought of using a large 6ft diameter 3/4" thick lexan plate which would have been very flat and smooth, but the banquet table cost $200 and the lexan costs $2,000. There were a few "whoop de doos" in the banquest table but nothing serious. The 3ft block table was not perfectly round but it was very flat and stable.

We marked all the timing positions on the table with happy face stickers or "clock face" so we could see the "stand still", "left march" and "right march locations.

Strobe light board as wired with buck pucks driving 7 LED’s each and 98 -3W LED’s used as Strobes.

6’6” Light board lit in standby LED mode (5% power) in my living room. This thing barely fit through the doors of my house.

Control electronics during testing. Still missing the final control board. The dream player has my “recursive” wiring so it will self trigger all the songs in order and give me out put signals.

Here are links to the schematics for this large zoetrope.

Zoetrope Control Electronics 2010

Zoetrope Flash Electronics

Dream Player Wiring 2010

Have fun! I know I did.

Gary