Stroboscopic Ornaments

Jiří Zemánek, whose EggBot work we have featured before, sent in this wonderful video of stroboscopically animated Christmas ornaments.

The stroboscopic patterns are designed in MATLAB and drawn by EggBot Pro on colored glass Christmas ornaments. Motion of the balls is controlled by custom mechanism built using components from two Prusa i3 MK3 3D printers, like six stepper motors and two Rambo boards. On top of designing the patterns, which is Jiri’s hobby (when he is not busy with research) and building the whole contraption in a very short time, the team had to deal with issues including non-spherical ornaments, or how to use Rambo board to precisely control the velocity profiles.

We love to see how people make things, and Jiri did not disappoint, sharing process photos of making the rotation mechanisms.

With great help from his colleagues Martin, Krištof, and Filip they took Christmas ornaments to the next level and taught them to dance!

The final setup shot captures how they created such a beautiful video.

Merry Christmas to Jiri and the Advanced Algorithms for Control and Communications group! Thank you for sharing your project!

4 thoughts on “Stroboscopic Ornaments

  1. Merry Christmas! Very cool. I would want to buy some as presents. Are they just patterns or do you think they could be made into nerdy themes? I love the one that looks like a DNA helix!

    1. If you check out the creator’s site, you’ll see that he’s a professor in Prague and is not likely selling ornaments. You can create designs of your own for use with the EggBot, and these are certainly excellent inspiration.

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