[HN Gopher] Lenticular Clock
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       Lenticular Clock
        
       Author : animal_spirits
       Score  : 181 points
       Date   : 2024-08-19 19:32 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.instructables.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.instructables.com)
        
       | andrewla wrote:
       | I'm most blown away just by the very existence of lenticular
       | sheets -- I didn't know that this was a general-purpose thing
       | that you could do at home Years ago I paid for a 3d lenticular
       | photo print but I always assumed the technology to do so was out
       | of my reach.
        
         | ljf wrote:
         | I took a photography course in the 90s and we did some 3D
         | images that you looked at two photos through a viewer or by
         | going cross eyed. The teacher tried to get us to invest in some
         | lenticular pictures but the cost for a 16 year old was just too
         | much. As I understood it back then, they cut your 2 images into
         | very thing strips and then interleaved half of them. I'd not
         | thought of it much since but of course it makes sense that a
         | good photo printer and the right software could make this all
         | far simpler.
        
       | stavros wrote:
       | This is really cool! I had no idea you could just buy these
       | sheets, I always thought you have to make them specially. The
       | fact that you can buy them and then print a pattern is amazing.
        
       | calebm wrote:
       | I love lenticulars. I'm working on writing my own lenticular
       | software right now. You can see some of my lenticular math art
       | here: https://gods.art/
        
         | silvershell wrote:
         | Amazing work!
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | I did some experiments creating lenticular 3D and failed
         | miserably. I'll look at what you got.
         | 
         | I would love to see the software, BTW.
        
         | theferalrobot wrote:
         | Those are amazing! Are you hand aligning those lenses on the
         | print or is there some sort of tooling/hardware/service that is
         | capable of it?
        
           | calebm wrote:
           | Hand aligning is the only way I know of.
        
             | mordechai9000 wrote:
             | Any chance you could share the math behind the pixel
             | snowflakes?
        
         | hnlmorg wrote:
         | I'd love to know more about the floating exclamation mark in
         | one of those pictures you've linked to
        
           | calebm wrote:
           | I just walked into the room and that was there. After some
           | examination, I realized it is a projection of the forest
           | behind our house shining through a crack in the window.
        
         | dr_kiszonka wrote:
         | I love the Give and Take one.
        
         | alt227 wrote:
         | When I click on a piece of art on your website it takes me to a
         | page with an unhappy face and a message that says "No video
         | with supported format and MIME type found".
         | 
         | Using Firefox 129.0.1
        
           | mkesper wrote:
           | It's a MOV tagged as video/mp4. For me, FF recognizes only
           | the audio part but if extracting the raw video URL I can play
           | it with vlc.
        
             | Hello71 wrote:
             | They're the same thing. The problem is not the container,
             | it's the H.265 encoded video which Firefox doesn't accept.
             | It's not a good idea to throw raw cell phone video onto a
             | website, first because it probably won't play everywhere,
             | and second because there's embedded high-precision location
             | data.
        
           | calebm wrote:
           | Thanks for the bug report.
        
         | navigate8310 wrote:
         | Hexagonal Jewel Tunnel looks like a hyperdrive into space
        
         | Karliss wrote:
         | I like how you chose the content of drawing so that it's
         | complemented by lenticular effect instead of fighting against
         | it. In many typical lenticular pictures that attempt to show an
         | animation or 3d effect, there are angles in which you partially
         | see two images thus ruining the picture by making it look
         | blurry/striped. Not sure if it looks equally good in real life,
         | but at least in the videos of your art the color gradients
         | seemed to produce much smoother transition, which doesn't break
         | the picture even when you partially see two consecutive frames.
        
           | calebm wrote:
           | Yes, if you want to do good lenticular art, you want nice
           | smooth transitions (on a pixel-by-pixel level).
        
         | ljf wrote:
         | These are amazing - I'd love to buy one, if you are selling
         | your art. Though shipping to the UK and import tax would
         | probably make this prohibitively expensive.
        
           | calebm wrote:
           | I am selling. I can be contacted at caleb@gods.art. I'm
           | really not sure how much shipping/tax would be to UK (never
           | sold internationally).
        
         | evan_ wrote:
         | those look great, you should post a Show HN about them. I'd be
         | interested to know more about your process if you're
         | comfortable sharing.
        
       | MaximilianEmel wrote:
       | Won't this show the wrong glyph if you're looking at it from the
       | wrong angle?
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | I suspect short people and tall people will likely disagree
         | about what time is shown.
        
           | ralferoo wrote:
           | This must be what people mean when they say they are short on
           | time.
        
           | borski wrote:
           | Honestly, that might be my favorite part
        
           | gmiller123456 wrote:
           | You notice you're running late, so jump up, and now you're
           | early.
        
           | BeetleB wrote:
           | Well, time dilation and length contraction do occur at
           | relativistic speeds :-)
        
         | o11c wrote:
         | Hm, could that be fixed by covering it with a "privacy screen"
         | (used to cover computer screens, basically a bunch of tiny
         | parallel tubes (all-angle) or grooves (one-axis, probably best
         | for this))? Then maybe a blur on top of that to increase the
         | viewing angle again (though that might cut the light too much
         | since it's not an active emitter)?
        
           | augusto-moura wrote:
           | Maybe a pinhole and lens? Like a camera but having only the
           | clock inside a chamber
        
         | romwell wrote:
         | >Won't this show the wrong glyph if you're looking at it from
         | the wrong angle?
         | 
         | Time is relative (to your height).
        
         | GauntletWizard wrote:
         | I'm actually really disappointed this wasn't addressed with a
         | fairly obvious "checksum" mechanism - Including the ":" in the
         | center, and giving that it's own lenticular pattern, such that
         | only when viewed from the right angle do you see the : and
         | otherwise you just see numbers.
         | 
         | (I'm not sure if this is really plausible - Are the numbers
         | close enough that that would actually work? If you're off to
         | the right or left, or too high or too low, could you
         | potentially see the : with a different set of numbers than
         | intended?)
        
           | hunter2_ wrote:
           | Seems completely plausible to me, and elegant to boot. To
           | minimize design change, the product name could be the
           | alignment check.
           | 
           | {You being too high/low} and {the angle of the numbers/check
           | being wrong} are two ways of saying the exact same thing when
           | ignoring the world beyond you and it, like using a handheld
           | mirror.
        
       | Someone wrote:
       | Utterly impractical as a clock. Brilliant hack.
       | 
       | I guess version two will add a camera, an eye detector and two
       | servos to orient the clock to create a real-live hybrid of xclock
       | and xeyes.
        
         | drjasonharrison wrote:
         | given that the display is viewpoint dependent, you need to
         | orient this clock to make it usable from a variety of vertical
         | viewing angles
        
       | eru wrote:
       | The old Google badges used to have lenticular images, too.
       | (Perhaps they still do? I haven't been working there in a while.)
        
         | shibbidybop wrote:
         | They were swapped out earlier this year for boring flat-image
         | badges. Major bummer.
        
           | eru wrote:
           | Hah, that will make tail-gating behind a Googler by just
           | flashing my old badge so much harder.
        
       | dr_kiszonka wrote:
       | Lenticular postcards were relatively popular in the 60s and 70s
       | (iirc). A family member brought some from Japan and I was
       | fascinated by them. Sadly, they got lost over the years :-(
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | A friend had a special lenticular camera, but that was ca. 1990
         | and he had to send the film away to get lenticular cards back,
         | so even if you can find a camera, you may have to reverse
         | engineer the printing/mounting process.
        
       | sdflhasjd wrote:
       | I had some success making lenticular sheets using a 3d printer by
       | printing a single-walled cylinder using a clear PETG, cutting it
       | up and flattening it out using a heat gun. You can use the layer
       | height to control "LPI". One problem is that it's double-sided,
       | which reduces the quality quite a bit.
        
       | mhb wrote:
       | Also, one of many digital sundials:
       | 
       | http://www.mojoptix.com/2015/10/25/mojoptix-001-digital-sund...
        
       | illwrks wrote:
       | Very clever idea. I wonder if instead of a printed sheet if you
       | could combine it with an e-paper display with an interlaced image
       | and then you could load different image sequences...
        
         | drjasonharrison wrote:
         | Clever in the "nice job, but this is not a problem I have, nor
         | a solution I would want to have to listen to..."
         | 
         | - you could use an e-paper display without the stepper motors -
         | you could use an o-led display and be able to read it in the
         | dark - etc
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-20 23:01 UTC)