Prompted by Us_Danger's demonstration, I made a 24 × 24 Pixel Box screen (with 16 fully configurable animation frames).
The overall design works as follows. Each animation frame is configured via a grid of switches. The configuration of each frame is stored for later activation. A counter (which is incremented via a switch or timer) feeds a multiplexer which activates the frames sequentially (looping back to the first frame after the last frame). When a frame is activated, it uses its stored configuration to configure the control modules of the screen and causes the control modules to trigger the screen in a cascading, inside-out fashion.
(For each frame, there are 192 of these.)
The latches work due to double "cross-wiring." A small scale example demonstrates this more succinctly:
(There are 192 of these.)
The white section accepts the configuration input from a block in a frame, reverses the previous configuration, applies the new configuration, and stores the new configuration. When the control module is triggered (via the red wire labeled H), it triggers its group of Pixel Boxes in the screen and also triggers other subsequent control modules.
The screen is divided into four quadrants that are each handled concurrently. For each quadrant, groups of 3 Pixel Boxes are activated via the control modules sequentially from the inside out. For example, in the top left quadrant, the groups are activated in this order:
The wiring within the screen here is difficult to see, so I made a legend:
In the top left quadrant, for example, horizontal red wires only go across the first 3 Pixel Boxes, horizontal blue wires go across the first 6 Pixel Boxes, horizontal green wires go across the first 9 Pixel Boxes, and horizontal yellow wires go across the first 12 Pixel Boxes (the entire quadrant).
The overall design works as follows. Each animation frame is configured via a grid of switches. The configuration of each frame is stored for later activation. A counter (which is incremented via a switch or timer) feeds a multiplexer which activates the frames sequentially (looping back to the first frame after the last frame). When a frame is activated, it uses its stored configuration to configure the control modules of the screen and causes the control modules to trigger the screen in a cascading, inside-out fashion.
(For each frame, there are 192 of these.)
The latches work due to double "cross-wiring." A small scale example demonstrates this more succinctly:
(There are 192 of these.)
The white section accepts the configuration input from a block in a frame, reverses the previous configuration, applies the new configuration, and stores the new configuration. When the control module is triggered (via the red wire labeled H), it triggers its group of Pixel Boxes in the screen and also triggers other subsequent control modules.
The screen is divided into four quadrants that are each handled concurrently. For each quadrant, groups of 3 Pixel Boxes are activated via the control modules sequentially from the inside out. For example, in the top left quadrant, the groups are activated in this order:
The wiring within the screen here is difficult to see, so I made a legend:
In the top left quadrant, for example, horizontal red wires only go across the first 3 Pixel Boxes, horizontal blue wires go across the first 6 Pixel Boxes, horizontal green wires go across the first 9 Pixel Boxes, and horizontal yellow wires go across the first 12 Pixel Boxes (the entire quadrant).
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