Build Your Own Drum-Style Mechanical Television with Scanwheel

Scanwheel is a drum style mechanical television you can build yourself

Build Your Own Drum-Style Mechanical Television with Scanwheel

I created Scanwheel, a DIY drum-style mechanical television featuring five small windows driven by a single scanning drum. Using a Raspberry Pi Pico and precise stepper motor control, the device delivers surprisingly high image quality despite its low line count. The project includes detailed instructions for 3D printing the drum, wiring the LEDs, and running the Micropython software to display images and stream video.

The software uses the Pico's PIO hardware to drive the LEDs, allowing extremely high horizontal resolution, so the image quality is a lot better than the 20p line count would imply.
  1. iefbr14

    Unfortunately the video link points to https://example.com/docs

  2. bensmoif

    It's stunning. The video speaks for itself. Please scale this up, like way up back of a truckbed size. This would be delightful to see spinning and running IRL.

    Then get a grant and make one as wide as a city street

  3. josh-wrale

    I can see this being applied to hubcaps in the future.

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2026-07-25