[Emre] sent in a cool art piece he’s been working on that visualizes your voice without the use of a microcontroller.
The project is called Visible Voice only consists of a laser, mirror, audio speaker and a phosphorescent disk. The laser shines onto a mirror mounted on the speaker and is reflected onto the disk. When an audio signal is played through the speaker, the light bounces off the mirror and produces a waveform on the disk. Think of it as the lowest tech way of building a model of a CRT; the laser is the electron gun and the speaker is a deflection coil.
Right now, [Emre]’s project displays a waveform along a circular path on the slowly rotating phosphorescent disk. Anyone wanting to copy this project could use a moving belt of the same material giving a much more linear (and straighter) waveform trace.
After the break you can see [Emre]’s friend [Ivan] testing out the glowing laser waveform visualizer.
Thats freaking awesome! I made something like this when I was younger. I basically glued some small mirrors to two speakers then pointed a laser that bounced off of both of them then played music through the speakers. It produced a cool effect where the laser moved with the music, often making perfect circles when there was constant bass.
It appears to have a very non-linear frequency response (bass looks like it shows up much better (unless my headphones have such poor bass that I am mistaken)). That would be a real asset if this were on display in a kids museum or something because it would reward non-shrill sounds among those playing with it.
Veeery nice project!
The frequency response is defined by the speaker, i guess (which is non-linear) . And for mechanical resons (mounting a mirror on top) its probably a fairly large broadband speaker which has probably a main-range of about 200Hz – 2kHz. The amplitude is significantly lower in higher ranges because of the inertia of the membrane.
addition: actually the used speaker, visible on the project site is a subwoofer (larger than i thought) probably mainly acting around something like 30- 800 Hz….
@none & @spike
Hey guys, thank you for your interest. I actually used an 18″ speaker at the beginning and made a mechanism to rotate the mirror (the picture you saw on the making of link). But this setup did not work, specially when a child or girl speaking. The reason was the speaker was only responding to low frequencies.
Later I replaced the 18″ speaker with a 6″ one and really glued a tiny mirror where the angular motion is maximum. And this solved the problem.
Cheers.
Very cool. That makes total sense about the frequency response, thanks for explaining that!
@Emre
Very nice construction, well done! May I ask how and where you found the point on the speaker where the angular motion is maximum?
where do you get (or make) a phosphorescent disc?
I tried to spincoat a CD with glow paint but it failed miserably…
they sell phosphorescent spray paint at hobby stores. If you’re careful, you can get a very nice coat
“Simply, a laser beam is reflected through a mirror glued on a speaker.”
what an understatement, look at the picture of the speaker and its obvious a lot of work went into setting it up. The pic is too dark to tell how its setup; I suspect the mirror is hinged, and the speaker adjusts the angle.
Where do you get these phosphorescent discs? Or strips of it?
Phosphorescent paint?
I think that using a disc rather than a belt just makes this project cooler and more artistic.
“without the use of a microcontroller”
OMG, on HaD?
No digital overkill?
I’m in shock. (faint)
Very neat hack.
Challenge: Do it fully mechanically, avoiding the speaker and amplifier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5XwEmySMGc
UV LED and PWM on the spindle motor to slow it down. Work in progress.
Well done! It reminds me of the old “silly string” audio visualizer in some ways :) This is a wonderfully simple solution to what can often be overthought. Great job builder! I did Dino’s from HaW and this one is on the table for today :) Keep up the good work :)
Very inventive… nice one! I did a similar thing recently that drew a waveform… it took a lot of time to set it up just right. Your method is elegant! Well done.
Very cool, it sort of gets the concept of a record player across. I suspect the phosphorescent material would not survive the bending of a belt, but a large diameter drum could work (like really old phonograph cylinders).
I tested a belt drive system. Glow in the dark vinyl material is available (the stuff I used to make glow in the dark patterns on shirts). I believe Mike S. has the test band now. It should hold up OK.
You can get the boards here cheap surplus
http://www.sciplus.com/search.cfm?utm_medium=search&formfield1234567894=&term=Ultraviolet+Art
Learned to do this in from my physics teacher 7 years ago.