Most "3D" LED projects are flat panels that only look deep from one angle. Maker AncientJames took the harder path with Vortex: two LED panels mounted back to back, spun at high speed, and driven by a Raspberry Pi 4 so the image hangs in a volume you can walk around. Hackaday covered the build on 5 Nov, and the software, simulator and CAD for the printed parts are on GitHub.
Timing is the whole trick
A volumetric spin display only works if every frame on the panels is locked to the shaft angle. If the render clock and the rotation drift, the scene shears or walks. AncientJames spent as much effort on mechanical balance and a stable spin as on the firmware. The enclosure is a clever reuse of a plastic lighting-globe shade, cut with a one-off rotary-tool fixture so the opening is clean and repeatable.
Vortex is one of several volumetric experiments from the same maker. An earlier design spun a perforated drum around LED panels for a lightfield effect instead of spinning the panels themselves. The GitHub package for Vortex includes a simulator so you can preview content before committing it to the spinning hardware.
Our take
This is a useful reminder that high-speed LED POV is a closed-loop control problem, not just a pretty pattern. Get the sync right and a Pi 4 is enough compute for a convincing volume; get it wrong and no amount of LED density will save the image. If you want a simpler entry into persistence-of-vision LED timing before building a full volumetric rig, our ESP32 POV display project covers frame timing on a spinning LED bar.
Image credit: AncientJames / Hackaday, cropped and resized.
About the author: Aswinth Raj is an electronics engineer and the editor of CircuitDigest, where he has published more than 150 hands-on projects and tutorials across Arduino, PIC, ESP32, Raspberry Pi and EV battery systems. He selects the stories on this page for what engineers and makers can actually learn or build from. Connect on LinkedIn
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