Spirography/Tripple Tunnel

I don't know if this counts for "laser-show" but it seems to me like it's a good place for a discussion of these fun things should go. I built mine last night (I was so pleased, I decided to wake up my brother to show him, and he was so sleepy, he didn't even understand what was going on! I ended up saying "It's a laser...Oh, nevermind..." :'( no one cared when I showed them my creation while they were half asleep... but they thought it was cool this afternoon when I showed it to them!). My machine might not be pretty, but it gets the job done. My greenie is also to the right in this pic.


I should give some credit to The BoomDog House of Lasers for the basic idea of the spirograph machine.

Edited to give credit where credit is due.

I figure this won't be worth looking at without a movie of the machine in action, so here's a small movie using the greenie.

Another one

Awesome. Great stuff guy.

great work it's kinda hard to get vids of laser shows unless the camera has long exposure or the laser is moving very very fast.

things said:

great work it's kinda hard to get vids of laser shows unless the camera has long exposure or the laser is moving very  very fast.

Click to expand...

For vids, its about the frame rate, exposure is not really something you play with much. If you know the frame rate, you can try to time your lasershow to coincide with that (lasershows are often timed for the human eye at some multiple of 24fps while many cameras do a multiple of 15fps, so often taped lasershows don't look the same). If your camera does have exposure control, you can use that to your advantage too but your average camera won't.

My camera lets me adjust the fps, and the pixel setting. I thought the first video looked like the frames were weird after I compressed it. I wonder if that could affect it... I'll try playing with the settings to see if I can get a better video for you guys. Thanks for all the tips on the camera settings. So are 15 fps better or 30? I know 30 is better for normal stuff, but I'm guess 15 might be better for this, since there are fewer samplings per second.

i think you will find that if you turn down the frame rate on your camera too much, you will probably catch only half the lasers movement. what is the human eye's frame rate anyway?

Oh, where did you get the circular mirrors?

things said:

Oh, where did you get the circular mirrors?

Click to expand...

My local surplus store sells front surface mirrors for about $2 each. They are just about that size and come covered and all... Very neat at a very impressive price. If anyone wants any I can get a ton of them and ship them out to you guys at cost.

--DDL

Pretty cool Vids a nice way to kick off the new forum, well done to you ;D

Jase

now can you control the shapes and whatnot by varying the speed of the mirrors?? i know thats how it works on my laser show! Is everything mounted "permenantly" on that cardboard? Very nice video's. True motion is considered 27fps and above.

Things- I got the mirrors at Johann's. It's like a hobby store. I usually go there to get art pencils and stuff. I had some long mirrors from a dead scanner, and was looking for a glass cutter, hoping to use the mirrors from the scanner, cut down to size. Then I found the mirrors. They were like $1.99 for 12 of them or so. They're not front surface mirrors, and there is pretty considerable light loss by the time the beam hits the wall, but that might be because my mirrors are dirty (they've got hot glue on them).

Tallaxo, I'm glad I could help kick off this forum with a bang... or spirally-shaped thing...

Kenom- the Pots I have installed allow me to change the shapes, but I think that the pots I put on have different ranges of resistances, because some have a very narrow band of resistances that allow the motors to go (it's weird to me that the motors have such a high threshold before they start to spin, but I guess when one uses space CD player motors, there's not much to complain about!). All the stuff on the cardboard could probably easily be removed. I had to adjust two of the motors after I glued it down, the glue wasn't completely set, so it was pretty easy to move it.

I'm probably going to make another spirograph machine, but I'm going to see if I can find motors that have very, very slow speeds, because as the motor slows down, right before it stops, it makes really, really cool shapes tha that I'd love to make repeatable.

falchionsmight said:

I'm probably going to make another spirograph machine, but I'm going to see if I can find motors that have very, very slow speeds, because as the motor slows down, right before it stops, it makes really, really cool shapes tha that I'd love to make repeatable.

Click to expand...

Hey falchionsmight, just wanted to help you on these slow motors... They're call gearhead motors. I use them here for some of the gratings. The surplus store I am talking about also has these at $5 a piece for some of the weird ones with a holder... they're variable using DC voltage, but very slow nonetheless. There are better ones but they are $20 a piece, much smaller too. I have a couple that I'm not using... I was thinking of putting them in something like what you're talking about.

Hope that helps;
DDL

Thanks for the ideas Daedal. I might get a lot of goodies at the surplus store. I'll have to go take a look and see what they've got. As far as motors go, this is my collection. I have another that's part of a CD ROM drive, but I can't tear it apart, because it has this cool IR counter wheel, with the LED diode and sensor on it, and I just think it loks awesome, hopefully I'll find a good use for it some day.

Some of my motors are out of scanners and ink jet printers, but some are from toys and CD players. SO I've got a collection going. I don't know if the square shaped ones are steppers, or what, I don't know enough about them to be sure, but they're the ones that drive the print heads on the printer... If anybody know how to use those motors, or a website where I could read about them, that would be cool. IF they are what I think they are, I'll probably use them for an X-Y scanner someday. But that's a few more months of electronics study, if I'm lucky, and smart enough ;D

If you show me the leads and a little bit more detailed photos of them I could give you a little more info. Easiest way to find out is to try and turn it EXTREMELY slowly. I find that steppers click regardless of how fast or small they step, while DC motors simply glide even at a very slow rate. What you need for an X-Y scanner are Galvanometers, which are more accurate and are much, much, faster at responding to a signal. They also use a different signal than stepper motors.

If you need further help with these just let me know. You motor collection is definitely something to be proud of.

GL;
DDL