anybody here interested in a recipe for a cheap laser show setup you can build with a few dollars in parts and a 5mw red? It's sorta cool.
parts needed:
How-to:
Fire it all up and turn the music loud enough that the woofer wiggles the mirror as much as possible without playing your music louder than your ears/system can handle.
The key is a wobbly speaker-mirror attachment point. If your resulting snarl of laser point is too tight, cut the woofer more.
You will see a tight tangle of pulsing pattern, and it will get big and cool-patterned and "hold" with an extended bass note. But the hold with long bass will have a lot of random wigglin'
When you get it right, the contraption produces a very cool blend of pattern and random trail overlaid with each other.
When I did this in college, the legend travelled and people who I didnt know heard the tale and came to the dorm room to get high and drink and see it. But that was the last century when lasers were only in labs.
People who own "cellular phones" to talk to people in other countries and "play DVDs" might not be as impressed.
parts needed:
- Low power laser pointer. Get good quality though. Small is best.
- Very cheap woofer. Must be large. 8 inches plus.
- Small mirror you can and will break.
- Rubber cement
- speaker wire
- stereo
- your favorite music with lots of bass. Especially bass where bass notes are held. Such as Rush Subdivisions, for example. Several songs on Dark Side of the Moon are perfect.
How-to:
- Cut out most of the cone from the woofer. Leave enough to be secure. The goal is for what remains to be very wobbly. But not rip itself apart.
- smash your mirror and get a piece about 1/2 x 1/2 inch.
- Glue the mirror fragment in the middle of the remaining cone. As in between speaker magnet and the edge of the speaker.
- wire your speaker across your speaker output in your stereo. Ideally use an empty set of speaker terminals and bridge the speaker across + on one channel and - on the other channel. (I am not responsible for system damage/you knowing what your system can handle in terms of blowing circuits. In fact I don't even need to disclaim responsibility, because I'm not legally responsible any way. I'm just using the disclaimer because it's internet custom. And I am mocking the custom.)
- Now you need to figure out how to support the woofer and the laser so you can place the laser very close to the mirror, and bounce the beam onto a large white wall without sitting there and holding it. You could also bounce into a ceiling, which might be easier.
- perhaps rig up a cardboard box and duct tape the speaker into the box corner. Tape the laser onto a cereal box or whatever. You'll figure it out. If you are in a state where pot is legal, I suggest Captn' Crunch. It will go well with what you will see.
Fire it all up and turn the music loud enough that the woofer wiggles the mirror as much as possible without playing your music louder than your ears/system can handle.
The key is a wobbly speaker-mirror attachment point. If your resulting snarl of laser point is too tight, cut the woofer more.
You will see a tight tangle of pulsing pattern, and it will get big and cool-patterned and "hold" with an extended bass note. But the hold with long bass will have a lot of random wigglin'
When you get it right, the contraption produces a very cool blend of pattern and random trail overlaid with each other.
When I did this in college, the legend travelled and people who I didnt know heard the tale and came to the dorm room to get high and drink and see it. But that was the last century when lasers were only in labs.
People who own "cellular phones" to talk to people in other countries and "play DVDs" might not be as impressed.
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