Glow Engine

The Glow Engine operates by combining precision motion control with persistent luminescence to render vector graphics on a specialized phosphorescent screen. At the heart of the system is an ESP32 dual-core microcontroller running the Arduino environment and the SimpleFOC library, which manages the complex task of coordinated motion and laser modulation. The display medium utilizes strontium aluminate powder coated onto a screen, acting as a physical frame buffer that glows after being stimulated by light. To paint images onto this persistent surface, a 405nm ultraviolet engraving laser is directed onto a salvaged hard drive platter acting as a high-speed laser mirror. This mirror is precisely manipulated by a gimbal motor driven by a DRV8313 driver board, with its exact rotational position tracked in real-time by an AS5600 12-bit magnetic position sensor for closed-loop control. Meanwhile, a Nema 17 stepper motor and its dedicated driver board handle secondary positioning tasks to shift the projection frame or mechanical setup. Together, the ESP32 coordinates the high-speed deflection of the UV laser beam across the strontium aluminate surface, exciting the phosphorescent coating just long enough to trace shapes, lines, and vector images before the persistence of the material naturally fades.