TED2007
Nick Sears: Demo: The Orb
Filmed:
Readability: 4.9
533,035 views
Inventor Nick Sears demos the first generation of the Orb, a rotating persistence-of-vision display that creates glowing 3D images. A short, cool tale of invention.
Nick Sears - Inventor
Working with his father, Ron Sears, Nick Sears is designing and building the Orb, a rotating LED display that uses persistence of vision to produce moving images in 3D space. Full bio
Working with his father, Ron Sears, Nick Sears is designing and building the Orb, a rotating LED display that uses persistence of vision to produce moving images in 3D space. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:19
In 1962, Buckminster Fuller
0
1000
2000
00:21
presented the particularly audacious proposal for the Geoscope.
1
3000
4000
00:25
It was a 200-foot diameter geodesic sphere
2
7000
3000
00:28
to be suspended over the East River in New York City, in full view of the United Nations.
3
10000
5000
00:33
It was a big idea, for sure, and it was one that he felt could truly inform
4
15000
6000
00:39
and deeply affect the decision making of this body
5
21000
4000
00:43
through animations of global data, trends
6
25000
4000
00:47
and other information regarding the globe, on this sphere.
7
29000
4000
00:51
And today, 45 years later,
8
33000
3000
00:54
we clearly have no less need for this kind of clarity and perspective,
9
36000
3000
00:57
but what we do have is improved technology.
10
39000
3000
01:00
Today we don't need one million light bulbs to create a spherical display.
11
42000
3000
01:03
We can use LEDs.
12
45000
2000
01:05
LEDs are smaller, they're cheaper, they're longer lasting, they're more efficient.
13
47000
5000
01:10
Most importantly for this, they're faster.
14
52000
2000
01:12
And this speed, combined with today's high-performance micro-controllers,
15
54000
4000
01:16
allows us to actually simulate, in this piece,
16
58000
3000
01:19
over 17,000 LEDs -- using just 64.
17
61000
4000
01:24
And the way this happens is through the phenomenon of persistence of vision.
18
66000
4000
01:28
But as this ring rotates at about 1,700 rpm -- that's 28 times per second.
19
70000
4000
01:33
The equator's speed is actually about 60 miles per hour.
20
75000
3000
01:36
There are four on-board micro-controllers
21
78000
2000
01:38
that, each time this ring rotates
22
80000
3000
01:41
it, as it passes the rear of the display,
23
83000
2000
01:43
it picks up a position signal.
24
85000
2000
01:45
And from that, the on-board micro-controllers
25
87000
2000
01:47
can extrapolate the position of the ring at all points around the revolution
26
89000
5000
01:52
and display arbitrary bitmap images and animations.
27
94000
3000
01:55
But this is really just the beginning.
28
97000
3000
01:58
In addition to higher resolution versions of this display,
29
100000
3000
02:01
my father and I are working on a new patent-pending design
30
103000
3000
02:04
for a fully volumetric display using the same phenomenon.
31
106000
3000
02:07
It achieves this by rotating LEDs about two axes.
32
109000
3000
02:10
So as you can see here, this is a, eleven-inch diameter circuit board.
33
112000
3000
02:13
These blocks represent LEDs.
34
115000
2000
02:15
And so you could see that as this disc rotates about this axis,
35
117000
4000
02:19
it will create a disc of light that we can control.
36
121000
3000
02:22
That's nothing new: that's a propeller clock;
37
124000
2000
02:24
that's the rims that you can buy for your car.
38
126000
3000
02:27
But what is new is that, when we rotate this disc about this axis,
39
129000
5000
02:32
this disc of light actually becomes a sphere of light.
40
134000
3000
02:35
And so we can control that with micro-controllers
41
137000
2000
02:37
and create a fully volumetric, three-dimensional display with just 256 LEDs.
42
139000
6000
02:43
Now this piece is currently in process --
43
145000
2000
02:45
due out in May -- but what we've done is we've put together a small demo,
44
147000
5000
02:50
just to show the geometric translation of points into a sphere.
45
152000
4000
02:54
I've got a little video to show you,
46
156000
2000
02:56
but keep in mind that this is with no electronic control,
47
158000
4000
03:00
and this is also with only four LEDs.
48
162000
2000
03:02
This is actually only about 1.5 percent of what the final display will be in May.
49
164000
3000
03:05
So, take a look.
50
167000
2000
03:09
And here you can see it's rotating about the vertical axis only, creating circles.
51
171000
4000
03:17
And then, as the other axis kicks in,
52
179000
2000
03:19
those actually blur into a volume.
53
181000
2000
03:21
And the shutter speed of the camera
54
183000
2000
03:23
actually makes it slightly less effective in this case.
55
185000
3000
03:26
But this piece is due out in May.
56
188000
2000
03:28
It'll be on display at the Interactive Telecommunications Spring Show
57
190000
3000
03:31
in Greenwich Village in New York City -- that's open to the public,
58
193000
2000
03:33
definitely invite you all to come and attend -- it's a fantastic show.
59
195000
4000
03:37
There are hundreds of student innovators with fantastic projects.
60
199000
4000
03:41
This piece, actually, will be on display
61
203000
2000
03:43
down in the Sierra Simulcast Lounge
62
205000
2000
03:45
in the breaks between now and the end of the show.
63
207000
2000
03:47
So I'd love to talk to you all, and invite you
64
209000
2000
03:49
to come down and take a closer look.
65
211000
2000
03:51
It's an honor to be here. Thanks very much.
66
213000
2000
03:53
(Applause)
67
215000
1000
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Nick Sears - InventorWorking with his father, Ron Sears, Nick Sears is designing and building the Orb, a rotating LED display that uses persistence of vision to produce moving images in 3D space.
Why you should listen
Nick Sears is a classic tinkerer -- his resume lists jobs that run the gamut from writing a mobile messaging framework to building a DC-DC switching voltage regulator. Along with his dad, Ron Sears, he's got a pretty neat father-son project going on: the Orb.
It's inspired by Buckminster Fuller's 1962 proposal for the Geoscope, which called for "a 200-foot-diameter sphere covered with 10 million computer-controlled light sources to be suspended over the East River in full view of the United Nations." But by making the sphere spin, the Sears realized, they could use persistence of vision and LEDs to create a bright display with a three-dimensional effect using far fewer light sources.
Sears is now a student in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. He and his father presented the Orb version 2 at Coachella in 2008 and continue to tinker with it.
Nick Sears | Speaker | TED.com