Great project on i-hacked.com. Using a simple laser pen pointer, a few misc parts, and about 15 minutes, you can make a simple laser communicator that converts a sound source into light that travels across a room, and back into sound with very little quality loss. Link.
Transmit Audio with a Laser Pen
Recent Entries
- CRAFT weekly recap
- 8-bit touch-sensitive handheld
- Cigar box music player
- The 'bike tree', an automatic storage system for cycles, can hold up to 6,000 bikes
- Building a folding table
- Maker Shed weekly wrap-up
- The Chumby has landed!
- Brainwave sofa by Unfold & Lucas Maassen
- Full MIDI drumset with Guitar Hero and Rock Band drums
- Hole punched art
Comments
Oldest comments listed first.
Leave a comment
Subscribe to MAKE Magazine!
Subscribe today, save 42% and get web access to MAKE free. MAKE Digital Edition is available only to subscribers.
$34.95 / 1 year
(4 Quarterly Issues)































Hmm. the setting, a huge college classroom with many students. Small earphones. receiver. big cheating possibilities-
Reply to this comment
There's another (lower-tech) way to go about sending audio data with light. Using a sheet of mylar, taped in front of a small speaker, a laser pointer, and a solar cell connected to headphones or amp just as in the original experiment. You can bounce the laser off of the mylar and onto the solar cell, and the visual waveform contains enough sound information to be replayed with remarkable clarity, considering the low-tech setup.
Reply to this comment
I used this build inside a science fair project that used different types of light emitters. I was trying to find the one that had the best energy efficiency for transmitting data. Unfortunately, te laser pen didnt work at all for me, so I replaced it with an LED and got some results. It sort of worked although the quality of sound was terrible and your couldn't exactly transmit the sound across a room. A small solar cell was used for the project.
Reply to this comment