Thursday, May 14, 2009

The Audio Portrait Artist

This is "The Audio Portrait Artist"(TAPA). It is made from recycled DC motors, cigar boxes, pieces from a broken multimeter, roof shingles, wine corks, and old radio knobs. TAPA works similar to a CNC machine, but instead of cutting things, it draws . There are four microphones which are each individually filtered to sense a certain range of sound. Starting from very low deep sounds to high pitches, TAPA draws in a specific direction based on the pitch it hears. There are four control knobs on top to control the sensitivity of each mic. Each microphone is individually amplified using LM386N IC chips, and a ULN2003A IC chip bring both DC motors together. There are two relays that control the direction for both motors. The analog gauge is wired together with the circuit to show the intensity of sound it receives.






9 comments:

  1. Awesome,superb,gallant,and just plain cool...I've come to expect nothing less out of that overly creative head of yours my friend...

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  2. Thanks man ! ill bring ot over some time so I can get a picture of what rocktamus prime drum playing looks like! thanks again chris

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  3. A brilliant conflation of acoustic-to-graphic analog events, in a perfunctorily executed mechanism.

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  4. You should be able to use it for electrocardiogram too. Check out with hospitals - may be they'd buy it :)

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  5. Can it be modified to indicate direction of the sound source? Is it to the left, right etc?
    People who loose hearing in one ear have issues figuring out where sounds are coming from. Something like this would be extremely useful.

    btw great work, keep it up!

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  6. Sharun it can be modified. I never thought of it as something really useful! Thank you Maomakmaa!

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