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mellowparty
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Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field?
#15112212 - 09/21/11 02:16 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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I'm trying to build a device that synchronizes really awesome imagery with music. Basically I am looking down on some liquid crystals under polarised light and they look something like that (they move too):

Now what I'm trying to make is to apply magnetic or electric field the input of which is a function of a given audio file. This way the orientation of the crystals will depend on the applied voltage which will depend on the song. So I would see and hear two synchronized information inputs 
It should look similar to that but respond to music not touch:
What kind of liquid crystals should I use (like can I convert an LCD screen for the purpose) and how do I make the whole music thing work?
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imachavel
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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: mellowparty]
#15112420 - 09/21/11 02:59 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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you want to make an lcd screen a touch screen? I don't know how to do that but I think most of them have an option to do it. I don't know if you have to actually open up the monitor from the back panel and configure something or if you just need special software to configure display settings somehow
as for the programs you'd need to make audio files respond to touching the screen that I have no clue on, I'm no audio engineer. I have a friend who is, but still he might not know how to do that. I can ask, but have no idea if he will know.
can you be way more specific though? what type of computer do you have? please list all specifications
>computer type >programs used >monitor type >how do you boot the computer, normally? >how do you open the programs? >does the program you use have an automatic feature to do this already? >do you have to program the audio files to do this? >what program do you use to program the audio files?
btw really cool project. good luck, give some more info and I'll see what I can come up with, but I doubt I'll know. I tried
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DieCommie

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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: mellowparty]
#15112446 - 09/21/11 03:04 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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I dont know why he would need to list all that computer stuff. Computer type? What does that have to do with it?
Looks to me like he want to build a stand alone audio visualization device from scratch. Is that right?
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mellowparty
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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: DieCommie]
#15112858 - 09/21/11 04:36 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
DieCommie said: Looks to me like he want to build a stand alone audio visualization device from scratch. Is that right?
Basically I want a substance that reacts to a magnetic or electric field and it should rotate polarized light. It should be a liquid crystal too. Imagine there is a wire carrying analogue audio signal. I would make a solenoid coil around an iron rod so that I have an electromagnet. The magnetic field will depend on the voltage which will depend on the track I'm playing. The liquid crystal molecules will react to the changing magnetic field (could be electric as well but I dont know how to make it happen) by rearranging the crystalline lattice (which will cause a nice optical effect).
Edited by mellowparty (09/24/11 09:15 AM)
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cortex
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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: mellowparty]
#15113208 - 09/21/11 06:03 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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Sounds cool, please keep us updated on your progress, I'm intrigued to see how this turns out. Kinda like a oil projector for the 21st century!
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mellowparty
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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: cortex]
#15115044 - 09/22/11 12:08 AM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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I developed my projector during an LSD binge and its still undergoing modifications. At the moment you sit in front of a screen of architecture grade paper and its basically like watching the telly .
I looked at some liquid crystals morphing the other night and it was the sweetest thing I've seen so far. Those are some far out chemicals I could see unique fractalesque patterns and blobs crawling like amoebas.
What about some molecule that is like a little tube and on one end it has say COO- and NH3+ on the other end (something like a fatty omega amino acid). It would have to align its axis along the vector of the applied electric field. You know, nematic liquid crystal phase.
I'm more of an optics man myself and I need help with the electric bits. Basically would my electromagnet work? I would probably need a powerful electrical output to create a magnetic field strong enough to be detected by the crystals. Maybe the headphone output of my computer would go through an amplifier which powers the speaker. But yeah thats the bit where I need help.
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5HTSynaptrip
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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: mellowparty]
#15118010 - 09/22/11 04:10 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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It depends on what you use for your liquid crystal to choose magnetic or electric fields right? I know little about electronics but there are some cheap sound activated cold cathode lights for PC cases. They use high voltages obviously for the cold cathode, but you can maybe use some of it if you read/search.
pcbheaven.com may have some info but I'm not sure. Maybe a piezoelectric transducer?
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HeartAndMind


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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: mellowparty]
#15132035 - 09/25/11 12:43 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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Sounds like awesome thing ! I always wanted to build something beautiful with changing live visuals for myself. Is it the broken LCD monitor you are going to use or some thing layered lcd screen? For magnetic field you probably wanna use LC frequency filters - High pass and low pass. You could use Tesla-type coils: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TeslaFlatSpiralCoil.png This will probably be best for flat screen, I believe it will work just as regular one, as it produces magnetic field exactly same way. It would be cool if, for example you would place huge high-pass filter at the centre of screen and four low-pass filters in the corners. High-pass filter would create magnetic field based on high frequency music, mostly melody & low-pass would create magnetic field based on bass. You would probably need to amplify signals too.
To me seems like it would work, but it strongly needs confirmation.
Btw, if you gonna build it, don't forget to post video of how it works
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mellowparty
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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: HeartAndMind]
#15132443 - 09/25/11 02:17 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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Well I'm pretty shit at electronics so I decided to make a tiny electrophoretic apparatus and use supercoiled DNA plasmids as a liquid crystals phase. I need to synchronize the electric field vector with the music output.
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mellowparty
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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: mellowparty]
#15132581 - 09/25/11 02:46 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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So far it only looks like a very fractalesque and very colourful lava lamp for your wall. No sound sync tho.
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HeartAndMind


Registered: 01/09/10
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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: mellowparty]
#15132687 - 09/25/11 03:04 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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Is it all built in plasmid? Also, where did you get it and Is there a website? I want to see how it looks like
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HeartAndMind


Registered: 01/09/10
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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: HeartAndMind]
#15132706 - 09/25/11 03:08 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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Or.. did you just put liquid crystals in DNA coiled capsule?
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johnm214


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Re: Liquid crystals responsive to electric/magnetic field? [Re: mellowparty]
#15132949 - 09/25/11 03:49 PM (12 years, 7 months ago) |
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Wow, that's quite an interesting idea.
I must admit that my first thought was that what you're trying to do is exactly what every other LCD manufacturer is trying to do, but with a more narrow application. As such, why not just develop some program to use a standard LCD monitor or projector rather than messing with the complicated part?
Are you trying to set this up with just a free 2d surface of material rather than with pixels? If so, is there any particular reason you need that rather than a more conventional solution?
I've messed around with liquid crystals a fair amount, though mostly in the chemistry side of things. My group would just hand things off the nutty physicists/engineers who actually did something with them.
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