You Can Now Build Your Own Microsoft Surface Hub 2-Style Rotating Display

Microsoft isn’t always the first company to come to mind when you think of “innovation” these days, but they actually do occasionally come up with some pretty cool stuff. The Surface series of tablet/laptop hybrid things are widely respected, and the Zune and Zune HD were way better than their iPod counterparts — anyone who says otherwise is just an Apple fanboy. Earlier this year, Microsoft demonstrated their new Surface Hub 2 which has a neat rotating display. Now, thanks to Florian Wesch, you can build your own awesome rotating display.

If you haven’t seen the Surface Hub 2, the basic idea is that it’s a gigantic tv-size tablet. For the most part, it works like you’d expect. But, it has an interesting feature that lets you smoothly rotate the screen and the content therein. The content will always be level, even if the screen is turned at an odd angle. Wesch’s Info-Beamer has a similar feature, and you can build it yourself. Info-Beamer is a digital signage platform designed to run on a Raspberry Pi, and this feature adds some substantial flair.

To build this you’ll need a standard Info-Beamer setup and a BNO055 sensor module that you can purchase from Adafruit. The BNO055 sensor essentially combines an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer to accurately determine the exact orientation of the board. Once you’ve connected up the BNO055 module, you can use the provided code to make it work with Info-Beamer. After that, you can rotate the entire display and have the screen always remain upright. Nifty!