#193 PoV Shake Stick Kit

Build and investigate an AT89S52-based “shake stick” kit

Notes

I picked up a PoV shake-stick kit for a few dollars recently. I’m interested in doing some persistence-of-vision projects, so I was intrigued to find out how this one worked. I’d seen some articles - like Matthew Norman’s blog post - on the kit but nothing that really got down to the inner workings.

Building the kit is very simple. The AT89S52 comes pre-programmed, and it only took about half an hour build the kit. It worked perfectly straight off the bat.

Then for the fun part - sleuthing out it’s provenance and internals..

Origins

Things started to get interesting when I found this archive.

If I can trust it as original work - and it does seem so - then it is the documentation and code from a student project that appears to be the first prototype of what eventually has turned up on many online sites as a standard kit.

The project was by Zheng Zhong Xing 兴向荣 (aka zhengzhongxing39) studying Control Technology and Instruments/Principles and Applications at a Chinese University (though I can’t tell which one). Dates are ambiguous - the initial project may have been in 2009, and work on the sources revisited in 2012/2013. It’s pure conjecture, but perhaps 兴向荣 dusted off the project after completing Uni to help kick-start a business.

The write-up is fascinating (and funny); I can picture a hard-working student persevering when all manner of things going wrong, while battling unreasonable school expectations and schedules. To translate and paraphrase some choice phrases:

• “Since unfamiliar and having no experience with drawing software application … beginning was a big ugly mess” (drawing the “fonts”)
• “… soldering was troublesome, with lots of changes and no solid basic skills, so burned out the first board”
• “regardless of the teachers strongly recommending assembly language, I used C language” (since studied in earlier course)

Some of the specific design decisions and changes made along the way:

• initial tests with Mercury switches were not that good because they would seize or otherwise fail. Replaced with a vibration switch like this component, which is what appears in the kits for sale. The original Mercury switch mount remains in the PCB design however;-)
• experimented with various power supplies. It’s now 3V (2xAAA) in the kit.
• uses the AT89S52 processor, programmed using Keil C51 compiler. The PCB retains an ICSP header for re-programming.

Hats off to 兴向荣 for carrying the project through to successful demonstration. I can’t remember producing anything as “finished” when I was at Uni!

At it seems he/she went on to commercialise the project and start an electronics business - you can find this kit and many others in the 兴向荣电子 taobao store, which appears to have been founded by zhengzhongxing39.

So how does the PoV work?

It’s quite simple:

• the vibration switch triggers an interrupt handler on INT0 as the stick is waved back and forth
• it ignores every second interrupt i.e. triggers in only one direction
• the interrupt triggers the display of the words/graphic with a delay between each column of data
• the main loop scans for the display selector switch input - when clicked, it cycles to the next messages for display.

I’ve translated and expanded the operating details in one of the example source files in annotated_source.c. The source is not identical to that pre-loaded in my kit (it has some different display patterns).

The interrupt handling is identical to Keil’s 8051 /INT0 External Interrupt Example Program.

Here’s what it looks like displaying a heart (my photo/my stick!):

Construction

Here’s my transcription of the circuit. The subsystems break down quite simply:

• power supply and power indicator LED
• 16 LEDs in common-anode configuration are directly driven by the microcontroller.
• A 1N4007 diode on the anode steps down the voltage for the LEDs, obviating the need for current-limiting resistors.
• S3 pulls down P3.7 and is used to switch the words/image being displayed
• a gyro vibration switch triggers INT0 on P3.2 and is used to synchronise the PoV display (as you wave it back and forth)
• an Atmel AT89S52 (on a 12MHz crystal) runs the program. ‘nuff said!

Credits and References

• LDE Shake Stick Flash Stick AT89S52 DIY Kit Magic Wand Blank PCB board - where I sourced the kit
• 兴向荣电子 taobao store - I think the store of the original author where this kit and others are available
• Shake stick - Persistence of vision wand kit - Matthew Norman’s review of the same/similar kit
• source code & project docs - appears to be an archive of the original project
• Atmel AT89S52 - product info and datasheets
• Atmel 8051 Microcontrollers Hardware Manual
• Keil development tools for the 8051 Microcontroller Architecture
• 8051 /INT0 External Interrupt Example Program
• Vibration switch Shock vibration sensor (G1A3) - example of the part used as movement input for the shake stick
• ..as mentioned on my blog