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“Ever wanted to see your name in lights? In this instructable we will show you how! We will show you how to make a big Persistence Of Vision Display, or POV Display for short. It is basically a row of lights, LEDs in our case, which turns around very fast to show an image. Furthermore, we wanted to go big, so we made a display of 1 meter; ideal for displaying huge logo’s! But what is this Persistence of vision thing? Wikipedia explains it as follows: Persistence of vision refers to the optical illusion that occurs when visual perception of an object does not cease for some time after the rays of light proceeding from it have ceased to enter the eye. The illusion has also been described as “retinal persistence” “persistence of impressions” or simply “persistence” and other variations. Or in normal terms: Our eyes are too slow to see the LEDs line by line, and will see it as a circle of continuous light. So by changing the colors at the right time, we can make images; how cool is that?! We made this display for a project at the university. We are in the first master year of electrical engineering at the VUB in Brussels, Belgium; that is also why its logo is the cover photo of this instructable! The project is a bit more advanced, and we will dive into all details and design considerations. But if you simply want to reproduce it, you can focus on the results only ;) We will start by building the rotating arm which holds the LED strip, and by making the enclosure that holds the arm. Next up are the electronics and the code. Let’s get started!”

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