My very first mechanical TV
Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 2:10 am
G'day all.
I'm an enthusiast/collector of vintage TVs, video machines and video cameras and have just started getting into the art of mechanical television and have built my very first mechanical televisor. Being a beginner at the art I looked for the simplest mechanical televisor design possible with easy to get components and found the perfect easy to build televisor on this webpage http://g8cye.fortunecity.com/html/nbtv.html .
So I round up the parts in my workshop and constructed my televisor according to that design, with some modifications such as using a bank of 6 orange LEDs instead of 2 and a bit more powerful DC motor running from 9V instead of 4.5V. The Nipkow disc I simply printed out on cardboard paper and sandwiched it between 2 smaller plastic discs cut from container lids for better rigidity near the motor.
After some testing and modification, I got the televisor to work and display recognisable pictures when in sync but synchronisation is bad as I have to keep adjusting the motor speed but that comes with this simple design as mentioned on the page. Amazingly too the pictures are not too bad despite the flimsy cardboard paper Nipkow disc being warped and wonky.
I of course used the Video2NBTV software from this site http://users.tpg.com.au/users/gmillard/nbtv/nbtv.htm to convert videos and pictures to mechanical standard which I settled on NBTVA setting and I converted the WAV files to MP3 for the convenience of plugging my MP3 player into the video input of the TV, the LED circuit.
Anyways there you have it, a slap together grass roots simple mechanical televisor made from common easy to get parts. I have uploaded some pics of my set and some photo snaps of the pictures from the screen. I also have uploaded to my YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/troysvisualarts a 15 part video series of the construction, testing and operation of my mechanical televisor, part 1 can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY6BiRuDmpo .
I'm an enthusiast/collector of vintage TVs, video machines and video cameras and have just started getting into the art of mechanical television and have built my very first mechanical televisor. Being a beginner at the art I looked for the simplest mechanical televisor design possible with easy to get components and found the perfect easy to build televisor on this webpage http://g8cye.fortunecity.com/html/nbtv.html .
So I round up the parts in my workshop and constructed my televisor according to that design, with some modifications such as using a bank of 6 orange LEDs instead of 2 and a bit more powerful DC motor running from 9V instead of 4.5V. The Nipkow disc I simply printed out on cardboard paper and sandwiched it between 2 smaller plastic discs cut from container lids for better rigidity near the motor.
After some testing and modification, I got the televisor to work and display recognisable pictures when in sync but synchronisation is bad as I have to keep adjusting the motor speed but that comes with this simple design as mentioned on the page. Amazingly too the pictures are not too bad despite the flimsy cardboard paper Nipkow disc being warped and wonky.
I of course used the Video2NBTV software from this site http://users.tpg.com.au/users/gmillard/nbtv/nbtv.htm to convert videos and pictures to mechanical standard which I settled on NBTVA setting and I converted the WAV files to MP3 for the convenience of plugging my MP3 player into the video input of the TV, the LED circuit.
Anyways there you have it, a slap together grass roots simple mechanical televisor made from common easy to get parts. I have uploaded some pics of my set and some photo snaps of the pictures from the screen. I also have uploaded to my YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/troysvisualarts a 15 part video series of the construction, testing and operation of my mechanical televisor, part 1 can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY6BiRuDmpo .