Hack # 52! This marks one year of me making a project a week! This one is a lot of fun because it involves LASERS! Thanks for watching, for your comments, emails and for your donations. hackaweek.com/h...
The green laser part of this is very non linear on the leading and lagging part of the display as shown on your grid markings. A double sided or 2 mirrors back to back would also make for a more continuous display. This is a very entertaining use of hacking though.
Thanks for the tip. I had seen a few laser devices with a rotating three sided mirror and it does indeed improve the resolution. I didn't have three mirrors at the time so I just made due with the single. Maybe I'll improve on the design and make a three sided one. I plan on taking a a version of this to Maker Faire NC this summer. :)
Ludemann Engineering Guess his mom never told him the "for want of a nail" ditty... You know; For want of a nail, the horse shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse the ridder was lost. And for loss of the ridder the battle was lost. For loss of the battle the war was lost. For loss of the war, a nation was lost... All from the loss of a nail. Moral: if you need a torx, for crying out loud, get a set!
Nice job Dino, that for the year of cool hacks. For those who want to continue with the laser scope idea, adding a second axis would allow the creation of Lissajous figures.
The hard drive actuator actually integrates the coil signal, the centering you get is thanks to the springiness of the flat flex cable. It would be better to take a small speaker and connect its membrane to a small pivoting mirror. And do the same thing to the time-base mirror, only either feed it some sawtooth signal, or use those oscilloscope music pieces available on YT.
You are very skilled! I would have never thought something like this could work! Very good job! I think someday soon i might try and do this. But part's in australia are a bit more expensive...Just have to make sure i do it right the first time! Thankyou for sharing! Excellent work!
Cool over-techie solution. What would have been over the top would be a Lissajous wave form. I've thought of doing that with old speakers and a pivoted laser. I'd like to try it with normal stereo music and with sufferance signals.
Well know i have seen everything. (until the next amazing thing comes about ) absolute genius . I used to take a small mirror and attach it to the center of a large speaker , point light at it , now i would use a laser . than watch the reflection when the speaker would move a different pattern according to the sound . Prehistoric compared to what you have done here . enjoy watching your videos ( this one tops at #1) . thanks
congrats on #52, you should put a piece of photo paper or film and expose it with the oscillograph, it would probably come out as a picture of the wave but who knows maybe something else would show up after developing, after all you would be left with a cool photo
Really impressive... We can use Convex spinning mirror instead of flat spinning mirror... This will generate full complete signal in box regarding Graticules and the area out of greticules...
Seriously impressive hack. Determination. I got a different view of an oscilloscope, "graph" as you put it. Cat adds a nice touch as a comedy side show ;) I hope you continue your efforts. Thanks!
A prism may be a good alternative to the spinning mirror. I like the previouse comment about making a guitar pickup from an armiture. Good option for pickups on a uke.
Cool! I noticed you glued the laser to the end of actuator arm. As we just care of the angle, I think it would be better to have it closer to the opposite side of the arm, to reduce inertia (and eventually get a better result at higher frequency)
Imagine using the motor in the hard drive to spin mirrors made out of platters. Moreover, since the platter can be bent it may be possible to reshape the platter mirror to fit the screen, making the laser point moves at constant speed on the screen.
Because the current going through the coil only exerts a force on the pointer and the dot of light only represents its position, you are actually measuring the second integral of your wave form, which is why it looks so different from what you are feeding into it! :-)
I will make one with the stepper motor on the y - axis to replace that HDD motor with the stepper motor for Higher ressolution also like some one here said that we shoukd using the speed control motor yeah good deal .And i do love your project .
Not sure if anyone cares but if you're stoned like me during the covid times then you can watch all of the new movies on instaflixxer. Been watching with my brother recently xD
+HackaweekTV that is great and I have been looking into this for a home sound laser diy project for my home cinema when I came across a video of a different technique months ago on youtube. I've tried a laser shining on mirrors or CD discs angled around my home to see if the sound wave or sine wave would propagate excite the laser beam into an actual wave, with some disappointing results and my cat Sooty being curious had misaligned the beam in one room by placing his paw on the disc each time that was balanced on some timber wood the disc CD was tided to the wood with a few more discs CD placed around in hallway kitchen and bedroom to reflect the beam so I could hopeful looking for standing waves, peaks and nulls. While beam was in one room living room while wearing red filter and few hours to set the disc CD up and align as its not easy. I can use the sound generator/s ether TrueRTA level 2 or REW room EQ Wizard to use sine wave tones. The beam misaligned and reflected off kitchen taps and few items on my rack shelve in the bedroom and possible over to bookshelf shined off the DVD bluray cases and onto the window more less around same time and embarrassingly a helicopter noticed the beam, where I have apologized for mishap and have since fitted curtains so it doesn't happen again with some fury paws curiosity cat playing with it while I'm in another room. I hope its not as serious has thankfully no harm was cursed but it was something I have overlooked but when doing laser sound diy projects indoors make sure windows a e covered! Never aim laser at your eyes always wear a red filter glass (that I have) never shine at anyone else eyes or animals/pets cats do like chasing after the beam for fun that's okay. If setting up arrays of mirrors kece the flicker effect ep curious cats away they may try to misaligned, it and you have to realign all over again. The purpose for the sound test I think you have shown me the way as its been eluding me for months how to get this idea to work? I knew it had to be possible just didn't know how s its first time I tried this and want to use a different approach over using microphones for picking you sine wave or pink noise tones. The flicker of the sine wave of the Laser Oscillograph, maybe due to the routing mirror cursing a sort of strobe effect? Maybe if the speed of routing was increased it would reduce the flicker effect, but I'm not knocking your project it gets 100% from me thumbs up. :) Great video thou some may find it hard to understand I found it relativity easy to understand the challenges and difficulties. Happy laser projects.
Standing in this guy's garage with him, his oscillograph will mostly appear to be fairly solid/continuous. Much cooler in person than seen on video. The flicker we see in this video is due to the frame rates of recording and playback, and as well, to our persistence of vision. Physics geniuses should know these things already - js..
I just love your video's and the way you present them. It is a very big motivation for me to do something too.... :-) thank you very much, and please dont stop....:-)
Pick up a fog machine and move the box out of the way, takes away the science aspect and makes it into a rave mechanic. You can see the waves pretty well especially if you increase the rotating mirror speed. :D
or just shine it on a spinning platter doing the same RPM and the amount of time it takes the lazer trail to got from point A to point B would be such a cool effect.
I remember trying to do this as a kid by placing mirror shards on loudspeakers, cannot remember how did that turn out though, never finished it, likely.
Great video! Drive the laser with some Led Zeppelin, a little modulating with Black Sabbath, you get the idea lol Seriously though, neat hack. I like the green laser too.
Congrats on a full year of hacks. How can you not have a torx screwdriver set when doing so much electronics? I find it more common than phillips on consumer devices.
Let me be the FIRST to say SECOND! Wooohooo can't believe this has been a whole year man! Congrats on persevering through it all... EGG recipes and all it's been a wild ride. What's next man???
If you could suspend a piece of silver mylar between 2 coils and put a charge on it, you might be able to display triangles with sharper corners. Do you know the old trick of bouncing the laser off mirror strips on 2 speakers?
