This might be an old trick, but it’s still cool to see a functional tool like the oscilloscope manipulated for an unrelated purpose such as this. [Jerobeam Fenderson] made a video explaining how to input stereo audio into an old digital scope in order to create of all things, dancing mushrooms… because why not?
In this case, [Jerobeam] used a Tektronix D11 5103N set in X Y mode and attached the left and right channels from his RME Fireface UC audio interface. One channel corresponds with X, and the other with Y. From here, he controls the wave forms discretely with the help of software like Pure Data (Pd) and Max (not free, but more powerful) which are visual programming environments made to enable musicians and artists to create software without writing lines of code. His video explains how to make a circle out of a sine wave, and then beat the crap out of it with math far beyond our comprehension. The outcome is pretty mesmerizing and leaves us wanting to try it out ourselves. Luckily, if you’re interested in experimenting with the voice of sine waves… [Jerobeam] has more information on his blog on how to do some scope play of your own whether your hardware is analog or digital.
You can see the dancing mushrooms in his video below:
Wasn’t this on here a long time ago?
Doubtful. If you can find it, you have better Hackaday search than the editors.
You may be thinking of: http://hackaday.com/2014/06/27/beams-of-light-an-oscilloscope-demo/
I swear I saw it on here a month or so ago when this was circulating teh interwebs again
are you on mushrooms?
LSD
Man… That is f!”#$%& awesome! Now I’m high!
I’m too
“Of course we want our mushroom to move, just like in real life.”
That’s how you know this guy is legit. :D
LOL my favorite part too… Pretty effing cool video
Now I really need to get my hands on an analog scope. I don’t think I could do this with my Analog Discovery scope…
Now I suddenly got an urge to re-create this with a dedicated analog computer. It should not be too hard to do… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer#Components
need a moment to compose myself and pick up my jaw ….
the only thing that would make it better would be some mellow Daft Punk beat in the background
Pure Data looks interesting, but WHY OH WHY projects like this have websites with ZERO screenshots/videos showing what they can do?
“hey, we made this thing that lets you do cool stuff by manipulating data without programming, and now we are going to post it on a WALL OF TEXT website so it scares people that might benefit from it the most”
Normally I instantly close any and all videos that are narrated via text to speech (PSA: please people, use your own voice – I’d much rather listen to a thick accent than some robotic approximation) but I’m glad I watched it all the way through. Very cool.
in this case TTS adds to the whole experience
This, plus this http://hackaday.com/2012/03/26/dinos-one-year-extravaganza-is-a-laser-oscillograph/ plus this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_%28drug%29 plus this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon equals DIY Laser Floyd!
I hooked-up the audio output from this video to my old 20MHz dual channel analog scope in X-Y, and I got a rough approximation of the desired output. Man that scope is totally uncalibrated! Very cool. I recommend some of Jerobeam’s other scope videos, too, which I got sucked into after watching this.
In case you want some more interesting functions…
Damn, did someone notice that mushrooms has same efect like spinning dancer (they rotates) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Dancer