Flip Fluid on Flip Dots
- ID
- 29141
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 26 Sep 2026, 3:50 PM
- Fetched
- 28 Sep 2026, 1:59 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://mitxela.com/projects/flipflip
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 3.0
- Created
- 28 Sep 2026, 2:00 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developers
What happened
mitxela built a FLIP (Fluid Implicit Particle) fluid simulation running on a flipdot electromechanical display, an installation for EMF2026, chosen partly because the dots' physical flipping supplies the swishing sound that LED-based fluid sims lack. The write-up covers the hardware path in detail: sourcing panels, KiCad boards, decoder boards, power supply, joystick and a power bus. Flipdot supply is the bottleneck — the author says only one manufacturer remains, with exclusive deals to a few art studios, Breakfast Studio reportedly won't engage below a $50,000 budget, and the author was turned down even after offering to forfeit his salary to run a sim on a company's existing display.
Why it matters
Almost nothing here changes what a typical developer, agent builder, or SaaS founder ships. The one concrete takeaway is supply-side: flipdot panels are effectively unavailable to small buyers (one remaining manufacturer, studio exclusives, $50k minimums), so most builders end up on eBay panels mainly made by Hanover, which still exists but no longer makes this display type — plan for salvage parts, not new stock. If you were hoping to prototype on flipdots, budget for reverse-engineering old panels instead.
Discussion angle
The project exists because of a pun and a sound problem LED sims can't solve — worth discussing whether a self-imposed silly constraint is what actually gets hobby projects finished, versus the very real cost wall: one remaining flipdot manufacturer, studio-only deals, and a $50k floor that pushes everyone to eBay salvage.