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Synchronizing Lights To Music

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Post  dlkempf Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:48 am

One of the goals of my project was to eventually try and get the lights in the Laminar Stream to synchronize to music.

I know there is a lot of software (and hardware) available to do things like this as we have all seen the awesome Christmas Lights displays, which I'm sure could be adapted to this fountain application. But those are a lot of work (and a lot of money) and I wanted to be able to easily adapt a broad range of music to the fountain without having to use canned songs or pre-program all the music! I know...a pretty tall order!

So, one day a few weeks ago I was sitting at a red light minding my own business, when all of a sudden it hit me! Well, actually, it rolled up along side me...one of those cars with a souped up sound system that was pumping enough bass that I thought my windows were going to shatter. Then I thought if the bass coming out of that stereo was strong enough to create those pulsing effects on large objects, what influence could a similar (but smaller) setup have on a laminar stream.

Well, the answer to that is VERY COOL!

Here is what I did...

I puchased an underwater speaker on E-bay for a couple of dollars. It was orignally used in a swimming pool for synchronized swimming events, I believe. I also bought 2 car-stereo amplifiers. I had an old outdoor speaker laying around the house along with a portable CD player.

The CD player is fed out to the 2 amp's and each amp feeds a speaker (or two, eventually)...one below the water to interact with the laminar nozzle, and the other above the water so the viewer can hear the music. I can then also control the bass and treble separately for each speaker, thus producing different effects in the water.

I have played around with a bunch of different types of music and have found that classical gives me the best results as it has the widest frequency range.

For some reason my camera won't pick up the lighting at night so I can't show any video of the effects on the stream when it is lit up, but I must admit...it looks really good.

And for my application doing this all but eliminates the need for a thumper or knocker or needle injector.

I'm still working on a cutter, though. But I'm sure if the fast approaching winter weather here in Western New York is going to cut that task short until spring.

Here is some video of the operation during the day. Hopefully this will demonstrate the effect so you can get the idea of what is happening.

Any thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

Thanks!








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Post  liteglow Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:21 am

Very nice project Very Happy

I not so sure if I want my laminar to make more noise, as I like them quiet Razz
But what I would think about is to make the light color change using music..
And maybe have the nozzle cut ON and OFF with the music.

I happen to own some fullcolor lasers that I pre-program show from my computer !
The laser have 2 mirrors x and y, 3 colors (blue, green, red), and I have one SHUTTER output..
The software is called Mamba Black !
I can make show and sync it with music..

So my idea was that maybe I can use my computer and Mamba Black to program both my 2-3 laminar nozzles.
And also with that I can program the color in my nozzle to match up with my music !

I have 2 different USB laser controller boxes, that each can control many outputs Smile
So I think it`s possible to make some pretty show using both the cutting on the laminar jets + the effects of colour.
And to make everything even better, you can also add maybe one more exploding water fountain in the middle of the show...

Here is a picture of the software I use to create laser show:

Synchronizing Lights To Music MambaBlack4

I guess everybody have seen a lasershow ??
Anyway, here is a video of my laser in action:




But again, the idea of putting a subwoofer into the water was clever Very Happy
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Post  John Tue Oct 13, 2009 1:10 pm

That really is a clever idea! Simple and elegant, and more importantly simple. I would really like to see how the light acts while you are using the subwoofer.

Why do you suppose the video isn't turning out?
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Post  covewi Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:00 pm

Looks like a lot of useful information on this forum

http://www.doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/index.php

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