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I built a ridiculous 1000 pixel display that takes an hour to draw an image and I'm now asking the internet to draw on it (what could go wrong?) Please submit some 40×25 pixel art at kilopx.com!

This project has everything: a web app, a physical controller, a custom CNC build, generated gcode, tons of fabrication, 3d modeling, 3d printing, material sourcing - so much to get lost in. It's the most ambitious project I've ever built.

Picking pixels was a real adventure. I've tried ping pong balls, styrofoam balls, bouncy balls, wooden balls, 3d printed balls, golf balls, foam balls... The problems I encountered were largely cost (even a 50¢ ball is $500 of balls), weight (again, 1000 of these things), and availability.

I settled on wooden cubes, painted black on two faces, and turned by a little poking mechanism.

I built a whole CNC machine around the wooden cubes, and I can tell the machine to go to change a specific pixel. Just one at a time, of course.

I then connected it to a custom web app I built that allows anyone to submit pixel art and choose what should be drawn next. You can view the status of the machine and interact with other submissions at kilopx.com

This has been a real passion project for me for six years. It's nuts. I shouldn't have done it, but I did. So please reward me, and go play with it!