What do you think?

DHSLXOP

Active Member
Hi everyone,
I was playing around on ebay searching for tech stuff and searched in "color scrollers." Well I found this and was considering bidding, because obviously that low of a price for so many would be pretty incredible. But I was thinking, is a used color scroller going to be safe and for that matter even going to work. I know that you guys, obvioulsy, can't tell me any definite answers, but was wondering if any of you guys that are pretty experienced working with this kind of equipment can look at the pictures and see if it at least looks like it will work/be safe.
Thanks in advance (and if nobody can figure it out, sorry and thanks for trying)
 
yeah it would be safe, who knows if it will work though, the listing says "as is" so you may get only one or two that work. Also the listen says that no cables are included so you will need to purchase that as well.
 
My instinct is to say no...it came from a k-12 school...and that's really 50/50 on whether or not it was taken care of.
 
No cables is a big negative, your going to be dropping a pretty good amount on that. It's hard to totally destroy a forrunner, but I have seen them in very bad shape. These could use a very good cleaning, but if you can pick it up for cheap, you might be able to get half of them working.
 
Then again, my guess is that the sellers have no idea what these things are or what they are really worth...

For a hundred bucks, it's a steal... Even if you just get the power supply and 1 of them working....
 
No cables is a big negative, your going to be dropping a pretty good amount on that. It's hard to totally destroy a forrunner, but I have seen them in very bad shape. These could use a very good cleaning, but if you can pick it up for cheap, you might be able to get half of them working.

You'd be surprised at how easy it is to puncture the motherboard....
 
My guess is you'll have to replace all the gel strings as well. I think those go for about $50 each, new.
 
You could always make your own...I've never had the patience for it though
 
How would I go about making my own if I had to? (hypothetically)

You have to get special tape, cut the gel to size (the manual for the scroller usually tells you what size), tape it together. Sounds easy, but the hard part is keeping everything in square and having every single string be the exact same size and length. You then tape them to the scroller, and your set. It is possible to do, though if you can afford it getting machine made scrolls hold up much better.
 
You have to get special tape, cut the gel to size (the manual for the scroller usually tells you what size), tape it together. Sounds easy, but the hard part is keeping everything in square and having every single string be the exact same size and length. You then tape them to the scroller, and your set. It is possible to do, though if you can afford it getting machine made scrolls hold up much better.

By special tape he means scotch tape.

This is by no means an endorsement for building your own...in fact far from it.

BUY WHENEVER POSSIBLE.

Scrollers typically have enough issues without homemade strings to muck things up.
 
Its true...but you might as well buy them at that point...
 
So I just wanted to tell everyone that I was bidding tonight like crazy and ended up being outbid by $10.00 :( Anyway, I was wondering if anyone could think of any ways to build a color scroller (or something like a color scroller-like not necessarily with a motor - though that would be neat - but maybe using pulleys or something)?
 
sure, put a roll of gel across two paper-towel rolls, attach tieline and there you go. It will probably cost you more in parts, R&D, sweat, and frustration than it is worth to build your own scroller. Not to mention the fact that anything you build will be a PITA to operate unless you are really good with electronics.

I think the DIY approach would end up akin to the "moving light" I helped build in high school that involved a fan motor, bike crankset, 4 PAR64s, some pipe and some swivel chesboroughs....
 
I think the DIY approach would end up akin to the "moving light" I helped build in high school that involved a fan motor, bike crankset, 4 PAR64s, some pipe and some swivel chesboroughs....

Sounds like a primitive prototype Studio Due CS4...haha. That'd be fun, actually...I've been thinking about building my own "moving light" and controller for a while...that'll probably be my final project for PHYS235, which is a circuit design class. Sweet.
 
yea I want to build a moving light for my dorm room. How sweet would that be?



Actually not all that much, it'd be a flashlight and two motors. But more like, how geeky would that be?!?
 

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