As an avid fan of the show Dr Who, [Adam Sifounakis] saw a model for a laser-cut TARDIS that piqued his curiosity that eventually grew into a multi-week project involving multiple setbacks, missteps, revamps and — finally — gratification. Behold, his sound activated TARDIS.
First and foremost, assembling and painting the model was a fun puzzle — despite a few trips to the store — with a little backtracking on the painting due to impatience. Next, the creation of a pulsing soft white LED circuit timed with an audio clip to really sell the image of a mini-TARDIS proved to be a tedious ordeal, paying off in the end with a satisfying glow through the vellum-diffused windows on the model.
How to trigger the lights? [Sifounakis] initially wanted a capacitive sensor to trigger the sound effects, but that way lay dragons — and madness — so he went with snap-activated effect to activate the TARDIS like the Doctor himself. After struggling with building his own microphone setup, he switched to an electret mic with adjustable gain which worked like a charm. Setting up this TARDIS’ Adafruit Pro Trinket brain involved a snag or two, and after that it was smooth sailing!
Until he hit another hitch with the power circuit too, that is. Luckily enough, adding a capacitor to give the circuit a bit more juice on boot solved the issue. All that was left to do was dismantle and rebuild his circuit after all this troubleshooting and substitutions, and — finally — install it in his model.
With much satisfaction and a final rework of the LED pulsing effect, it was done. Check it out!
Be it in the shape of an infrasonic subwoofer, a motion-sensing alarm, or topping Christmas trees, the TARDIS never fails to amaze.
I’m still waiting for a fully functional replica of TARDIS
The scientific paper is already there:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.7983
We have the engineers, what are we waiting?
WOW !
It’s bigger on the inside !
That’s what she said…
My other time machine is a DeLorean
Fun project and fun to read. Glad Adam got it to his liking :) My next part has nothing to do with his build and i also love Dr. Who (will always be a Bakerhead).
I should add that laser cutting wood (allllllll of the recent project boxes I have seen) folks really need to sand down the burned cut edges past the char. It makes an otherwise nice looking project appear campy. I have to say I have been amazed at how ubiquitous this assembly method has become. I personally do not care for it aesthetically.
I kept waiting for the tardis to disappear. What happened? Is it broken?
I actually uploaded a video of just this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoXIdEzKwj0
I had made a video of that, but it looks like they used one of the other videos.
Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoXIdEzKwj0