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I have thought of a technique to increase the resolution of a POV (persistence of vision) display. In an usual POV display, the LEDs are arranged in a strip and spun in a circle. There are two limiting factors to increasing the radial resolution along the circumference of any one circular path that an LED follows. One is, depending on the speed of the POV wheel, the minimum time required (decided by the microcontroller) to change the LED's color in case of a RGB. The other factor is the LED's width, that increases the 'bleeding' of color from one pixel to the neighboring pixel if the LED changes color or brightness too fast.

If one were to fix a slit in the front of an LED, |*| <-- like so, would this help improve the resolution of the POV display; by doing this one would in effect be reducing the width of the 'pixel' along the circumference on which the led would be traversing.

Thus if one were to use a fast enough microcontroller and a narrow enough slit, one could probably obtain a very high resolution along one dimension at least.

To be clear I've not yet implemented this, and am just looking for any experienced person who can tell if this will work or not.

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  • $\begingroup$ Your slit just makes the LED effectively smaller, right? But then all you're increasing is the horizontal resolution; the vertical resolution stays the same. Why not just use a smaller LED? $\endgroup$
    – Chuck ♦
    Sep 1, 2016 at 15:27
  • $\begingroup$ There is a limit to the size of the LED am I right...say i wanted hypothetically, 330 ppi :) $\endgroup$
    – WizardOfRobots
    Sep 1, 2016 at 15:35
  • $\begingroup$ How do you get 300 ppi vertically? Or are you okay with bad vertical resolution? Personally I would only try to achieve a horizontal resolution that is as good as the vertical $\endgroup$
    – Chuck ♦
    Sep 1, 2016 at 15:36
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    $\begingroup$ "say i wanted hypothetically, 330 ppi :)" what is your real requirement? It's moot to give you any advice if you dismiss it for some hypothetical requirement. This site is not for discussion but real answerable questions. @Chuck♦I think the terms horizontal and vertical are a bit misleading, it's rather radial and tangential I'd say. $\endgroup$
    – Bending Unit 22
    Sep 1, 2016 at 16:07
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    $\begingroup$ But using a small Led is enough. That's what (some of the) regular displays are made of. Smartphone screens have more than 330 PPI. Still: what resolution are you aiming for? You ask for improvement on some unspecified design. My suggestion would be to first create a working prototype and only then think about what you want to improve and how to do it. I guess you might want to prioritise the improvements in other areas like frame rate for example. $\endgroup$
    – Bending Unit 22
    Sep 1, 2016 at 17:16

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