[Pete] had some spare time on his hands over his spring break, and he was itching to build something. He settled on a laser light show since, after all it was spring break, and what says “Party” better than a laser light show?
He glued three hobby mirrors to three small motors, mounting the motor assemblies on the lid of a wooden cigar box he bought for next to nothing. When the laser is pointed at the mirrors, they reflect the beam off one another, and finally against a projection surface, creating interesting shapes and motion. He programmed an Atmega328 to control the laser light show when in automatic mode, and added 4 pots to control the mirrors’ spin rate when set in manual mode.
The visuals are pretty cool, as you can see in the videos below. We love the laser light show concept, and [Pete] definitely gets extra points for his cigar-box casing as well.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7U4SZhPL3I&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTItwBvmH-Y&w=470]
A while ago i built something similar, but i glued mirrors to two speakers and played music through them, the vibration from the speakers moved the mirrors and made cool patterns with the laser.
@Tim: Vids, or it never happened ^^
Nice. I remember doing something like this when I was teenager for parties. I bought a HeNe laser and built a kind of track containing RC servo with mirrors. I was cutting the light beam with the mirrors to reflect the beam to different places in the room where motors mounted mirrors where placed (I was using tape deck motors). Cool tunnel effects were achieved form different places, especially with my home made smoke machine ;-) I still have the HeNe tube but I thing the PS capacitors must be dry as it doesn’t lights anymore (it was nearly 30 years ago ;-) ! )
youtube is not for slideshows
My brother made a similar hack years ago.
He used a couple of old speakers as well, hinging the mirror mounts on different axis to get more movement.
As I recall he hooked some guitar effects pedals up for some more interesting effects.
-then we pointed the laser at our neighbor’s Harley and made him think it was still turned on for a minute until he blocked the beam.
GOOD TIMES!!
That is a very cool effect for such a simple setup.
Has anyone come across similar reflected laser projects that do more than just spirograph / beat visualization?
Pfff. You should be at a bar *enjoying* a laser light show for spring break – not building one. Silly nerds – go get drunk like a normal person.
@Bill – respect the nerd, one day a nerd will be your boss
(not trolling, just ramblin’) i stuck a laser module on a pipe cleaner, hooked to an 18650, instant transfunctioner. some of the functions include: cat toy, seismo-oscilliscopythingamajig, and more! spinning angled mirrors is cool, even more awesome if you can make it spell out words, make a sign! mine operates on the vibration of whatever it’s mounted on, and does stuff like the spinny-mirror-machine, and amplifies the magnitude of a wave via leverage, or something. mine:n00b pre-K ‘hack’, less power consuming, but more random. with the right sensors, it could be a scientific instrument, so.. bring back gilligan’s island, the professor and his more modern electronic junkpile to work with, attempting to aim an überdirectional WiFi transponder at Hawaii so he can check into facebook lol imma ramblinman and i’ve got a hack for you, it’s some nanotransistors for your brain and it’s called Dimethyltryptamine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYKw_W0mh4I
@anon. I’m my own boss. And nerds don’t move up to management – they lack the people skills. Most likely ’cause they sat home during spring break and played with lasers.
This is pretty cool!
Theres another project on the net that connects a custom built scanner to a pc. Then a linux program runs and creates the movement in the servos, the guy does some neat stuff with them.
Check it out:
http://marcansoft.com/blog/openlase/hardware-mark-1/
sorry thats the hardware, this post has videos of it in action:
http://marcansoft.com/blog/2011/01/openlase-hardware-and-simulator/