Bubble wrap cure for Nexus 7 speaker distortion

nexus-7-bubble-wrap-fix

[Home Brand Cola] is quite happy with his Nexus 7 with the exception of the built-in speaker. It produces fairly good audio quality until he reaches about 50% volume level. Anything above that produces distortion. He figured out how to fix it using a small piece of bubble wrap.

The eureka moment came when he was using his Nexus … Read the rest

Sound reactive Christmas tree makes folks happy

public-square-holiday-tree-is-sound-reactiveThis non-traditional Christmas tree in Victoria, British Columbia is bringing people together this holiday season. It boasts over 800 lights that react to sound. You can see the pulsing and color changing that go along with some Tuba carols in the clip after the break.

The art installation was commissioned by the Downtown Victoria Business Association. A great big … Read the rest

Acoustic levitation of water droplets

acoustic-levitation-water-droplets

These water droplets are not falling; they’re actually stuck in place. What we’re seeing is the effects of an acoustic levitator. The device was initially developed by NASA to simulate microgravity. Now it’s being used by the pharmaceutical industry do develop better drugs.

The two parts of the apparatus seen in the image above are both speakers. They put … Read the rest

Simple hack plays any sound as your door chime

[Jim's] technique for turning a wireless doorbell into a custom ringtone player is so simple. He manages to get the entire thing done using only a screwdriver and wire clippers as tools. But if you’re looking to use this over the long-term we’d recommend soldering the connections rather than relying only on the twisted wires.

Above you can see all … Read the rest

Doppler-effect lets you add gestures to your computer

What if you could add gesture recognition to your computer without making any hardware changes? This research project seeks to use computer microphone and speakers to recognize hand gestures. Audio is played over the speakers, with the input from the microphone processed to detect Doppler shift. In this way it can detect your hand movements (or movement of any … Read the rest

DSLR performance measured with audio editing software

[Jaroslav's] camera didn’t have a feature to measure the speed of its response in different modes so he figured out his own method. Using the microphone on his webcam he recorded the sound made by the mirror and shutter movements, then used Audacity to analyze the camera’s performance.

When you get right down to it, this is a fantastic … Read the rest

chipKIT Sketch: Mini Polyphonic Sampling Synth

In our hands-on review of the Digilent chipKIT Uno32, we posed the question of what the lasting appeal might be for a 32-bit Arduino work-alike. We felt it needed some novel applications exploiting its special features…not just the same old Arduino sketches with MOAR BITS. After the fractal demo, we’ve hit upon something unique and fun…… Read the rest