Sound-reactive EL Wire Box Makes Gift Giving Awesome

January 15, 2012 by 5 Comments

sound-reactive-el-wire-display

[Jonathan Thomson] was ruminating on EL wire displays and decided that most he has seen are boring, static fixtures or installations that simply flash EL wire on and off at a fixed rate. He thought that EL wire has far more potential than that, and set off to build something more exciting. Using a graphic equalizer T-shirt, with which we’re sure you are familiar, he put together a slick, sound-reactive EL wire display.

He started off by removing the EL panel and inverter from the aforementioned T-shirt, separating the display into two pieces. He set aside the panel and focused on wiring up the inverter’s ribbon cable to a set of EL wire strands he picked up for the project. Once he had everything hooked up, he put a design together on a cardboard box, which he intended to use for wrapping Christmas presents. With the holiday behind him, [Jonathan] broke down his original display and constructed another to offer up some fun birthday wishes.

While the EL inverter was originally built to display sounds detected by an onboard mic, [Jonathan] added a 3.5” stereo jack to his so that he can feed audio directly into the display using an MP3 player.

Continue reading to see the EL display in action, and be sure to check out his writeup if you are looking to spice up your gift giving this year.

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Sound Treating A Studio

December 6, 2011 by 14 Comments

Looks like [Dino] is getting the band back together. After a junkyard tube amp and a DIY tremolo stompbox, he’s back again, this time doing a bit of sound treatment in his studio.

Most rooms naturally have a bit of flutter echo. You’ll notice this when you move into an apartment or new house – rooms sound a lot more cavernous without rugs, drapes and furniture. Unfortunately, having a bunch of couches doesn’t bode well for the workflow in a studio despite what MTV Cribs may have told us. The usual solution is to put up some sound-absorbing material on the walls, and a metric ton of cardboard egg cartons don’t work.

[Dino] found a bunch of acoustic panels his neighbor threw out during a renovation (yes, we know, he’s very lucky). After doing some pre-installation tests, the panels were hung. Afterwards, the amount of echo was drastically reduced.

The good news is we finally get a look inside [Dino]’s studio. We saw the junkyard tube amp we covered earlier, but not the neat tremolo pedal he made.

Check out [Dino]’s video of sound treating a room after the break.

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Mimicing A Heartbeat In Sound And Electrical Pathways

November 4, 2011 by 19 Comments

If you set a cardiac nurse loose on a Propeller microcontroller and some parts you might not know what to expect. But we’re intrigued by the outcome of this project which looks to mimic a heartbeat’s audible and electrical traits. The post about the project is in four parts which are not linked to each other, but you can find them all, as well as a video segment demonstrating the rig after the break.

It seems that this was intended as a Halloween project, but we don’t see why it wouldn’t be interesting any time of year. The Propeller demo board is used to mimic a heartbeat with a pulsing LED. But that doesn’t seem all that awesome, so the sounds of a heartbeat were added to the program to coincide with the blinky light. Here’s where the medical training comes in: the next phase of the process was to lay out an array of LEDs on a breadboard in the shape of the human heart’s electrical system. Now you’ve got a pulsing LED, heart sounds, and a lighted animation showing how the electricity travels through the organ.

To add a little [Poe] to the project there’s also a CdS light sensor. As you approach the project you block some light from getting to the sensor and the heart rate increases.

We think the next logical step is to add a heart rate sensor, so that this can illustrate what your own heart is doing. Boom! Another project ready for the Children’s museum.

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Retro Video Games Sounds…for Your Toilet

June 6, 2011 by 10 Comments

super_mario_toilet

After reading about a Super Mario Brothers themed bathroom, [Jonathan] decided that it would be pretty cool to have his toilet play the “warp pipe” sound whenever anyone flushed.

He grabbed a small sound drop key chain on eBay and disassembled it to see how things worked. Once he figured out which solder pads corresponded to the warp pipe sound he added a few wires that, when shorted, trigger the sound effect.

He debated as to how the sound generator should be wired to the toilet, and was pretty reluctant to place the key chain inside the tank due to concerns about sound volume and water damage. He ultimately decided to trigger the sound effects using triboelectric charge, much like those touch lamps from the ’80s. He rigged up a simple circuit that is connected to both the toilet handle as well as the water intake valve on the wall. When someone touches the handle, the small charge that is present in their hand triggers the sound effect as you can see in the video below.

Instead of using a standard project box, he opted to build a small warp tube replica from cardboard and paper, which really brings everything together nicely.

While he says that the circuit is pretty sensitive, triggering at odd times or not at all, we still think it’s awesome.

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Generating Music With Credit Cards

May 8, 2011 by 19 Comments

mozarts_credit_card

[Steve] was browsing around at a local electronics surplus store when he spotted an old Tranz 330 point-of-sale terminal that seemed pretty interesting. He took it home and after disassembling it, found that it contained a Z-80 based computer. Because the 330 shares the same processor as other hobbyist-friendly devices such as the TRS-80, he figured it would be quite fun to hack.

While the Z-80 processor is pretty common, [Steve] still had to figure out how it was interfaced in this particular device. After spending some time reverse engineering the terminal, he had free reign to run any program he desired. After thinking for a bit, he decided it would be cool to use the terminal to generate music based on whatever card was swiped through the reader – he calls his creation “Mozart’s Credit Card”.

He found that just playing sounds based on the raw contents of the mag strips didn’t produce anything coherent, so he wrote a small application for the terminal based on the Melisma Stochastic Melody Generator. Music is generated somewhat randomly using various card characteristics, as you can see in the video below.

We think it’s pretty cool, but [Steve] says he’s always open to suggestions, so let us know what you think in the comments.

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Recycled Sound – An Art Installation Not Lacking Arduinos

March 17, 2011 by 6 Comments

[oakkar7] wrote in to show us [Ben Johansen] and [Jonathan Snow]’s  interactive art installation, Recycled Sound(Website has a virus). The exhibit will premiere  in the TWU Arts Triangle Walking Tour March 25th from 5-7pm.

Currently a work in progress, the final plan is for the outdoor installation to feature a podium in the center with a rotating top, and various islands surrounding. As the podium’s top is rotated the surrounding islands come to life with a variety of light and sound displays which vary depending on how the podium is turned. While the electronics are not recycled, the actual sculptures and music making elements themselves consist of scrap yard parts and factory waste.

The whole display runs off of 12.. yes TWELVE Atmel 328s with Arduino boot loaders! The center podium houses a transmitting circuit consisting of two atmega 328s with Arduino boot loaders sharing a crystal, an hmc 6532 magnetometer breakout board and two RF transmitters.  The Islands each contain a receiving module with, obviously,  an Arduino and RF receiver. The receiving Arduinos connect to opto isolated switching modules for motors and lighting. Check out [Ben]’s blog for in progress shots, code, and build information.

If you are looking to control some 12V motors/lights with your 5V Arduino be sure to check out the pictures in the blog. While we here at Hackaday may be quick to jump into soldering [Ben] follows the proper development progression to the letter. Each aspect is bread boarded, then refined, then transferred to a soldered perf board.

update: His site has some kind of malware going on. None of us noticed it in Firefox, but after complaints we fired up ol IE. Yup, nastyness there. You can go there at the following link if you dare.

More after the jump:

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Halloween Prop: Mario Bros. With Full Sound Effects

November 2, 2010 by 13 Comments

Creativity abounds in putting together this pair of Super Mario Bros. costumes. [Rob] and his wife didn’t stop with a well-assembled troupe of familiar wardrobe items, but decided to go for authentic sound effects as well. It started by finding a few of his favorite Mario sounds on the Internet. From there he grabbed a greeting card that allows you to record several message. He recorded each of the sounds and removed the electronics from the card. From there an Arduino mini was connected to the playback buttons and to a Wii nunchuck. After the break you can see that when the kids press a button, the card plays back the sound of jumping, shooting fireballs, etc. So far it’s the best use of an audio greeting card that we think eclipses its intended use.

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