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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

That is super cool.

But admittedly when I saw the title i was hoping for a mini version of those massive flipboard signs. Those things are amazing.

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There's a great Github project for building your own Splitflap/Solari displays from the ground up for $20 each https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap

Oh man that is great thank you.

Amazing, thanks for sharing!

There are various projects for 3D-printing these… looks like a pretty feasible undertaking until you realize you need dozens to make a proper sign.

https://www.instructables.com/id/Split-Flap-Display/

That would be really amusing. Those are called Solari boards, by the way, after the manufacturer (Solari di Udine).

Maybe someone enterprising might (or has?) created a character flipping routine that mimics the search through the tiles and set it to the authentic sounds?

The attempt by that company to create their own digital version is really bad. (search youtube for it)

JWZ created a splitflap hack for xscreensaver. It includes broken flaps and missing flaps, and you can pipe text into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZOL2jyDey0

Looks like https://www.vestaboard.com is that enterprising company.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/1/11/16876582/v...

I've never used it, but it does look interesting.

I don't think vestaboard ever ended up shipping. I was somewhat interested in getting one, but now I'm really glad I didn't put down a deposit. Original estimates were Dec 2018 ship date, now they say Summer 2020.

They are coming summer 2020, for about $2200. (I think it's been delayed a few times). They look cool. But for my personal use, not $2200 cool.

They're really cool! The original Solari board modules are mega expensive though. I looked at getting some to make a clock, and it probably would have cost me in the thousands.

As an indirect result I now have a project in the works to make them. The concept is simple, but building them to be inexpensive is a challenge. Every extra bracket or fastener gets multiplied by _n_ modules.

I too have been wanting to make a split-flap display. I would be interested to hear more about your project if you have any posts or resources somewhere.

I've been taking notes as I go, going to put together a slide preso at some point with stuff I learned in the process.

I'm a lazy engineer, so I avoid doing tedious hand-crafted stuff. I'm using 30pt museum board for the flaps currently (I was going to use plastic, but found that matte paper types of material work really well).

Thus most of the work has gone into designing something that's highly repeatable with minimal labor. All the cards are printed and then laser cut, the bracketry will be CNC waterjet and has a single bend, the center hub is 3D printed. I'm making it DIN rail mountable for easy installation and maintenance.

Here's a sneak peek. https://imgur.com/a/2ROn6Nd

There's a great Github project for building your own Splitflap/Solari displays from the ground up for $20 each https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap

Right now it's focusing on 40-character flaps (not super convent for clock-making), but it's open-source so I'm sure you could modify it for your purposes with some effort.

That's just for the enclosure. It looks like it comes out to 60-70$ depending on how you build it. I'm targeting sub $50, but it's tough. Good resource though, didn't know about those cheap geared stepper motors.

followup: actually I went to the the builder's youtube video and they're claiming $25~$30 per module. so pretty good.

I have a small one in my office that tells the time & updates the S&P every 15 minutes. It's surprisingly loud. Especially at the top of every hour when all of the dials are flipping I've more or less gotten used to it but I have one colleague who refuses to have any meetings in my office because they find it so distracting.

Something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN_AWLraqNw

Software: https://github.com/dmd/clack

Similar to what I was thinking.

A Solari Split-Flap Display? I love that they're making new ones! Starbucks has been putting them in their Reserve Roasteries.

I'm also sort of happy with the 'modern' ones that are actually LCD screens with speakers making the noises. It's cheating, but it's a nice tribute.

There is something to be said for these kinds of vestigial remnants of technologies past. I've always been fascinated by them, and in fact this kind of thing in computer folklore -- for example parts of the docs that explain something exists "for historical reasons" -- are one of the things that got me into programming. For example the "size_t" size has pretty funny origins which I'll leave as an exercise to the reader. But this kind of thing also has a linguistic component which is also equally fascinating to me. For example how we still "dial" a phone, which then "rings" for the person being "called".

One of my favorite examples of this is the HTTP_REFERER. Someone made a typo in the RFC in 1996; software developers a century from now may well still be spelling it "referer" as a result.

>"size_t" size has pretty funny origins

"Yep. Its origins lie in the old <std.h> header we developed at Whitesmiths, Ltd. in the late 1970s. We used the typedef BYTES as the type of sizeof, to be sure we could count all the bytes in the largest declarable (or allocatable) object. X3J11 chose size_t to follow the *_t convention that had begun to creep up in Posix."

https://bytes.com/topic/c/answers/221996-origin-size_t-curio...

Do we have different senses of humour, or have you heard something different???

If you're ever in my part of the world, you should visit the Connections Museum[1]. It is truly humbling to see how far we've come. At this museum, you can dial a phone, hear the 'thinking' of all the electromechanical switching crossing the room, before the phone starts ringing.

[1] https://www.telcomhistory.org/connections-museum-seattle/

A nice tribute, but also defeats one of the most important features of the split flap: the data remains visible even when the power is off

We've had a short project at some point recreating a station's big departure times flipboard in an ipad app; my colleagues went out there for a couple hours to just look at the thing, record background and noises, write down its behaviour and draw the small nuances and damages in the flippers and their contents. Over a weekend my colleague made a POC of the animation of a single unit, then in the next week the two of us copied that one over in a big grid to display departure times from the API. It was a really cool little project, and IIRC the managers of the organization we made it for would frequently just have it open on their desk or show it off to people.

One of those is definitely on the cards for me, I have been meaning to get to that for a long time.

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