The rings make it more of an deko type art-piece for the time it is not in use. It is the only concession to non-functional design-appearance. All the rest is pure practicality.
People have no idea what it is. The best guess to date was a siren!
The metal rings are actually more dull than they appear on the photo, being covered in mat-varnish. They do indeed give a blur in full daylight, but a dimly lit room where this is viewed in practice they disappear and produce no reduction in quality what-so-ever. In fact the added weight gives momentum which increases stability, being laminated card and leather.
The disk is wide - with a large edge to the side of the image for masking. A three-sided black box between the diffusion-plate and the disk to confines the line length. The right-side of the case is covered in black suede-leather to mop up the last stray rays of light from the sync-disk. So double images and spoiled contrast is not a problem.
The loose lens is great. You can see the tiny picture as it is and then set the distance you like if you use the lens. The image is quite huge once you have lined everything up and sit at a distance.
The next experiment will be with a prism to make the viewing angle more flexible. I want to be able to look down at it.
Klaas Robers wrote:I don't understand the metal rings around the holes. They reflect the stray light and incident lightfrom the room, and thus blur the picture that you see. I also guess that you see direct light from the LED cluster around the edge of the disc. If you had made a viewing funnel between the lens and the disc, it would have been more practical.