Water droplet televisor

[Viewmaster]

In the NBTVA newsletter 34/1 page 5, there was an article by Kevin Hadfield, ( maker of the colour carousel televisor),
entitled, "Droplet Televisor."
In it he outlined an idea to get 32 rows of pulsed falling water droplets to be illuminated at the side by the light source.

Ever since, I have always been turning over that idea, as a NBTV picture formed in falling water would look really amazing.

So, has anyone taken this very, very diffcult, task on any further I wonder?
There are many problems to be overcome, and the final result, if at all possible, would look shimery in a breeze, or if one blew on it.
........But that would only add to the wonder of it all.

[aussie_bloke]

When I saw the thread title, I was automatically thinking it was about Displair which is a water vapour display recently invented in Russia http://displair.com/ .

Anyways the water droplet televisor is a very cool idea and I hope someone decides to make it!

[Viewmaster]

I shone a torch onto water dripping from a tap. The drips are like beads and reflect light best when illuminated from the front, so I would invisage a ring of luxeons at the front of the display and the viewer looks through this ring at the droplets.

As a falling object gains speed by the time elapsed squared it would give a longer picture if the droplets could be allowed to fall as far as possible before entering the NBTV area. Maybe fall down a chimney like vertical shielded section first to prevent sideways drift due to air currents.

Also 32 staggered little cams mounted on an overhead shaft,
revolving at 750RPM could actuate 32 small rubber diaphrams to generate the drops ???

It certainly is an intruging set of mechanical problems.

Any brave soul up for it?

[Viewmaster]

Here's a water curtain display where tiny solenoid valves switch in water jets to form pictures of fish eyc. Quite impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9SZhZ7n ... 12833FB715

Photo of small water curtain. Now if the droplets could be controlled and sync up we would have a great NBTV !

How about using boiling water where the NBTV would be in the steam?

Excuss me please, but I'm just going through another mad stage of mine.

[DrZarkov]

At the video you can see, that the speed of the water droplets accelerate during they are falling. That will make it very difficult to calculate the picture. The basics are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall

Using steam (a true vaporware televisor) works completele different, as the steam replaces only the canvas for a normal projector.

A real vapour TV could work with an array like the Niptrix, but with valves instead of the LEDs, putting out little clouds, forming a picture. (I would build it in a very large way, to write pictures into the sky. That is our answer to that old fashioned crop circles. )

[Viewmaster]

If the NBTV picture were formed just as the water droplets started to fall then the picture would be very cramped at the start of each 'fall'.

But if one allowed them to fall a short distance this cramping would be less and the picture more linear as the wikepedia graph shows.

Or one could eject the droplets under slight pressure to get around this gravity distortion. This would also enable a longer picture to be seen.

The droplets should be formed as large as possible in order to get a wide picture. Say about 1/10" in dia to give a 3" wide picture.
So the NBTV vertical droplet fall area used would be about 4 1/2"
This would require an ejected speed of approx 150 ft per sec !!
( 4.5" x 400Hz per line/droplet)

BTW, if the droplets and were viewed reflected from a flat mirror, then a true NBTV picture would be seen. ie right to left and botton to top scanning.

We progress?............ Colour next................................

[Viewmaster]

In my searching for items about water/jets/valves/magnetic water etc etc I found this 3 colour high speed image of 3 water drops colliding.

Thought it so beautiful I'd share it with you although it has nothing to do with this thread.
Also the rig that created it.

[DrZarkov]

Colour is no problem, maybe you have more colours than you want with the beautyful rainbow the droplet-o-vision system produces...