Sound Driven Laser Effects
What are these Sound Driven Laser Effects supposed to be?
These laser effects are obtained by placing a mirror in specific positions on a speaker while inputting certain frequencies to this sound emitter and aiming a laser to the mirror.
The position of your laser and mirror determine where the effect will show up.
The vibrations of the speaker will make the laser dot move, consequently making awesome effects.
The Materials
((Look in the images for extra info))
[This list includes some material specifications that I used, you don't need to use the exactly same tools , they're just here if someone's curious of what I used]
1 - Glue Gun (230 VAC, 50 Hz, 150 W)
2 - Glue Gun Sticks (12 mm)
3 - 1.5 mm Male to 1.5 mm Male Audio Jack Cable
4 - Audio Amplifier (Kunft ER-2012H, 220 VAC, 50 Hz)
5 - Speaker (4 Ω)
6 - Laser (<5 mW)
7 - Old Earphones or a 3 Pole 1.5 mm Audio Jack w/ cable
8 - Sound Source (Cellphone, MP3 Player, Laptop, Desktop, etc)
9 - PVC Electrical Tape
10 - Soldering Paste/Resin/Flux (Caleffi DECAgel 100 g, ZnCl2)
11 - Solder (Rothenberger ⌀ 1,5 mm, 100 g, Sn60% | Pb38% | Cu2%)
12 - Soldering Iron (220-240 VAC, 20/130W)
13 - Double Sided Tape
14 - Set-square or Ruler
15 - Mirror(s)
16 - Glass Cutter
17 - Wire Cutter
18 - Wooden Board
19 - A support for the Speaker (I improvised on this part)
The Mirror
For this step you will need:
1 - Mirror(s)
2 - Glass Cutter
3 - Set-square or Ruler
4 - Double Sided Tape
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It is advised you do a straight cut on the mirror, while using a ruler or set-square to direction it if you need and you should not pass multiple times on the same place because you may shatter it.
After you do the straight cut place your hands in the mirrors extremities and snap it in half
You may have to do this some times, because you can break the mirrors wrong or shatter them. Thankfully for me all the times I did this the mirrors got a straight cut on the side (as much as possible, this won't be factory perfect of course), and they did not shatter either.
After you've cut your mirror, apply the double sided tape on the back like shown on the 2nd image above (You may have to arrange it irregularly for the speaker).
Note: This is not the mirror I used, this is just an example to show you how you can cut a mirror, if you don't know how to. I am using a square mirror for this project, like the one on the images above.
The Speaker
For this step you will need:
1 - Speaker
2 - Old Earphones or a 3 pole 1.5 mm Audio Jack w/ cable ((image of the audio jack above))
3 - Solder
4 - Soldering Iron
5 - Soldering Paste/Resin/Flux
6 - PVC Electrical Tape
9 - Wire Cutter
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For this step if you're using old earphones like I did, just cut them away near the ear speakers (if you want a long cable), strip the cable jacket until you see the copper wiring.
((You'll now see 1 small cable and copper shielding on each cable that leaded to the ear speakers, I have a white cable and a red cable that leaded to the left earphone and right earphone))
Dive the wire tips in the soldering paste, put some solder on the hot soldering iron, and tin the copper tips.
Twist the copper shielding until you get a somewhat solid tip and tin it as the step before.
Now that the tips are tinned, just put the small cable tips together (white and red in my case), and touch them with the iron and the solder in both will merge.
Take the copper shielding tips and do the same.
At last take the speaker you will use for the project, you'll notice that it has a Positive Sign (+) and a Negative Sign (-), solder the merged white and red tip to the Positive (+) and the Copper Shielding merged tip to the Negative (-) as the image shown above.
((You may want to isolate the cables with PVC Electrical tape, I didn't so I could show you how the cables were soldered))
The Board
For this step you will need:
1 - Wooden Board
2 - Glue Gun
3 - Glue Gun Sticks
4 - Speaker Support
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Take the speaker support (I used a cover of an electronic lamp ballast and a small L shaped metal for the back of the speaker) and glue it to the middle end of the board.
Put the speaker on the support (you can glue it's back if you want, like I did, so it doesn't move).
You can see all this in the images above.
The Setup
For this step you will need:
1 - Laser
2 - Audio Amplifier
3 - 1.5 mm Male to 1.5 mm Male Audio Jack
4 - Wooden Board with mounted Speaker
5 - Audio Source
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Connect the Amplifier's power cord to a nearby wall socket.
Place the wooden board on a surface near the amplifier (Im using my dinning room table)
Connect one jack of the male to male audio jack to the amplifier's input, and connect the other end to your audio source. (I decided to use a laptop for maximum sound output), then connect the jack of the speaker to the amplifier's output, as seen in the 1st image above.
Place the laser opposite to the speaker.
You can see the whole setup in the 2nd image above.
The Effects
For this step you will need:
1 - Mirror
2 - Some patience
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Until now I have found several effects that you can do with this. They are really hard to get because there's lots of variables: angle of the mirror on the speaker, the vibrations, the position of the laser, and many others.
Until this point I had been using a regular speaker. (the one you saw glued)
But today while I was testing this I remembered I had the subwoofer on the amplifier, and I could use it for the effects , since it gives more vibration (I had already tried this already, it resulted in failure, but I decided to try again some more times).
This time, the effect is way way bigger then the first ones I did.
I could be here all day showing you all the effects I know and showing the positions of the mirror in the speaker, but I'd would lose hours doing this, plus you can never get the same effect twice, only similarly.
I have managed to do: (All the following names were invented)
1 - The Atom effect (only around 3 or 4 times) For me this is the 2nd best effect.
- mirror in the normal speaker.
2 - The Growing Line (only around 7 or 8 times)
- mirror in the normal speaker.
3 - The Directioned Shout (lots of times this is the easiest one to do, because you just place the mirror randomly)
- mirror in the normal speaker.
4 - And at last the best one, the one that I found today The Tornado (this one is the one I consider the best)
- mirror in the amplifier's subwoofer.
You can use many types of music, but I find the ones like dubstep, electronic and so on much easier to get better visual effects.
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The videos you see above are about The Tornado.
In the images above you can see some advices of the mirrors position to get different effects, but mostly try to mess around with the mirror yourself to get different effects because I can't give direct advice on how to position the mirror (Because there's no exact and correct way to place them yet).
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Note: Since using the subwoofer makes your mirror vibrate more, you need to take in account that depending on the intensity, frequency and time, your mirror will eventually start moving and may even jump off the subwoofer.
This didn't happen with the regular speaker though.
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If you do this Instructable yourself and/or find different effects and want to see it here send me a message.
For suggestions, questions, ideas, improvements, etc comment down below.
The music used in both of the videos is Top of the World 2 track from Stephen Walking featured on Monstercat 020 - Altitude
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You can always make a cover for this to make it look better on the outside, just bear in mind that the box might seal the effect in and not show it fully on the wall.
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This instructable can, and probably will be modified in the future.
Don't be to harsh, after all, it's my first Instructable, Nreal Spark