I picked up the little persistence of vision LED kit at the Austin Maker Faire (<$20) and was determined to find a way to mount it to our YMCA Adventure Club fire pole (a big torch).  I decided that it would be inviting/tempting to the fingers of little children so I had to mount it in a way that wouldn’t hurt fingers if touched while spinning.

Link to the POV kit:  http://www.ladyada.net/make/minipov3/

 

I used a cardboard mashed-potato can which made for easy cutting and mounting of the circuit board with 4 small nuts and bolts.   I placed the battery pack on the opposite side of the can to help a little bit with weight balance.  The battery pack is substantially heavier than the circuit board, but the weight imbalance really doesn’t cause much trouble with the spinning. I considered switching to a AAA battery pack, but it turns out that the weight of the batteries helps keep the drum spinning (momentum).  It probably would help to add even more weight.

 

I found a cheap (<$2) lazy susan bearing with a center hole just big enough for the firepole to go through the middle.  I cut a hole in the aluminum bottom of the potato can and mounted the lazy susan bearing to it with 4 small nuts and bolts.

Link to the lazy susan bearing:

http://www.bearwood.com/HARDWARE-LAZYSUSAN.HTML

 

I used a couple of angle brackets from Lowes to attach the lazy susan bearing to the firepole.  I had to drill a new hole in each angle bracket to get the proper spacing to the bracket from the pole. 

 

 

I was intending to add a motor drive to the project.  But it works fairly well just spinning by hand.  I was able to use pretty cheap (~$20) Black and Decker high speed (2100 RPM) cordless drill to drive the drum.  I put a nut drive bit into the drill and wrapped the bit with electrical tape a number of times to get some “friction”.   I can lean the side of the nut drive bit against the bottom rim of the can to drive it.   But this isn’t the most elegant solution.  For now it works fairly well to spin it by hand.

 

 

Although you can clearly see the tribe name (Mohicans), it would work better if the can diameter was perhaps twice as big.