---
title: "FLIP Fluid on Flip Dots"
slug: flip-fluid-on-flip-dots
url: https://listedarticles.com/articles/flip-fluid-on-flip-dots
canonical_url: https://mitxela.com/projects/flipflip
content_type: blog_post
language: en
published_at: 2026-09-24T12:00:00.000Z
updated_at: 2026-09-27T09:13:19.603Z
author: "mitxela"
author_url: https://mitxela.com
authored_by: human
publisher: "mitxela"
publisher_url: https://mitxela.com
topics: ["Hardware", "Engineering", "Open Source", "Graphics"]
license: all-rights-reserved
word_count: 377
reading_minutes: 2
citation: "mitxela, mitxela. \"FLIP Fluid on Flip Dots.\" 24 Sept 2026. https://mitxela.com/projects/flipflip (all-rights-reserved)"
# The full text follows. The web page shows an extract and sends readers
# to the source above; quote the citation and link the canonical URL.
---

# FLIP Fluid on Flip Dots

> mitxela builds a FLIP fluid simulation on salvaged Hanover flipdot panels for EMF2026—drive electronics, power, eight-panel install, and the pun that started it.

# FLIP Fluid on Flip Dots

**Author:** mitxela  
**Published:** 24 Sep 2026  
**Source:** [mitxela.com](https://mitxela.com/projects/flipflip)

Here's the story of how I put a FLIP fluid simulation on a flipdot electromechanical display. FLIP stands for Fluid Implicit Particle, and yes, the primary motivation behind doing this was the wordplay. Built as an installation for EMF2026.

## Flippin' fluid simulations

LED fluid sims are silent — flipdots make the swishing noise for you. Commercial flipdot art installs start around $50,000. After being turned down for access to an existing display, the path was: salvage Hanover panels, reverse-engineer drive electronics, and build something tileable and fast.

## Path to some panels

Panels came via Sam (Look Mum No Computer) — 13×28 Hanover units (date code 2007), awkward edge PCBs that prevent seamless tiling, and original drivers that take ~1 second to update.

## Connect the dots / drive electronics

Key insight (from mikeselectricstuff): dots need only ~1 ms pulses to polarise cores even though mechanical flip takes ~60 ms. Matrix scanning causes visible artefacts; the path chosen was per-dot drive on the *existing* boards.

Mike’s H-bridge + 595 approach inspired a series-capacitor half-bridge design using cheap motor H-bridge chips in single-ended fashion, doubling dots per shift register, with latch/enable tricks for BJT quiescent current. KiCad hierarchical row layouts, CH32V003 per panel, later RS485 frame sync.

Power is brutal: flipping many dots at once can demand tens–hundreds of amps for milliseconds — solved with distributed electrolytics (≈0.5 F class total), XT60 / LiPo testing, and a quieted 40 A 12 V brick.

## Scaling to eight panels

Prototype: 28×26 on two panels with a Pico 2 running FLIP ~40 FPS. Full install: eight panels (~15 kg plywood frame), decoder boards with IDs, STM32H7R3 motherboard, analog arcade joystick over MIDI-style DIN + local ADC MCU, VESA stand after gimbal dreams met the calendar.

Dead pixels, conformal coating, coil repairs with tweezers, and endless soldering ensued. Total hardware cost under £500 (~£0.17/dot) — not counting time.

## The Event

Installed in EMF’s lounge tent for the flip sound; ran four days. Gym-ball “gimball” experiments for physical tilting. PCB designs published for others with matching Hanover panels.

## Conclusion

A pun-driven electromechanical fluid sim that actually shipped — and a reminder why commercial flipdot walls cost five or six figures once labour is priced in.