Solari split-flap

A satisfying split-flap experiment in the browser with sound.

Jake Weidman pinged on WhatsApp with this tweet. That tweet is on quite a journey itself, but it got me interested in building this out with Claude. A few minutes later I had a base version ready.

Solari is open-source. All source code lives on GitHub: github.com/hardikpandya/solari-split-flap.

The board

How it works

It is a Solari-style split-flap display built with vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No dependencies, no frameworks, no build step, just a single HTML file in the repo.

Each cell has a physical drum that only spins forward, cycling through every intermediate character in sequence (space, A through Z, 0 through 9, punctuation), the same behaviour as the mechanical boards at train stations and airports. The drum starts fast and decelerates as it settles on the target character. A synthesized mechanical click plays on each flip using the Web Audio API.

Quotes cycle every 5 seconds. Author names appear in yellow, right-aligned. The cascade staggers left to right, top to bottom.

If you want to run or fork it, clone the repo above. It’s MIT-licensed.