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Coronafix

Thu Sept 13 2007, 03:12AM

Registered Member #160 Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 02:07AM
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 938

Has anyone seen this before?

It's got to be one of the coolest gadgets out there.

Avi

Thu Sept 13 2007, 03:37AM

Registered Member #580 Joined: Mon Mar 12 2007, 03:17PM
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 410

yes. I tried to make one but to be able to get the detector to work reliably seems rather difficult and i rarly got it working well for more then a second or so. I used a laser and a photodiode, there much be some trick to it or something. I ended up using an oscillator and changing the speed, it worked ok for longer moments then the above method.

Firnagzen

Thu Sept 13 2007, 09:17AM

Registered Member #567 Joined: Tue Mar 06 2007, 10:55AM
Location: Singapore
Posts: 147

Ooooooh. Hypnotic...

Hm, after reading on what I could find (not much. I keep on turning up Nate's original page), I don't quite get it, though. Is he strobing the lights at a varying frequency and keeping the drip rate constant, or varying the drip rate and keeping the strobe rate constant? It seems like the drip rate is being varied to get different effects.

Also, his page lists highlighters as the source of a flourescing pigment- Really? Highlighters glow under UV?

Dago

Thu Sept 13 2007, 09:34AM

Registered Member #538 Joined: Sun Feb 18 2007, 08:33PM
Location: Finland
Posts: 181

Firnagzen wrote ...

Ooooooh. Hypnotic...

Hm, after reading on what I could find (not much. I keep on turning up Nate's original page), I don't quite get it, though. Is he strobing the lights at a varying frequency and keeping the drip rate constant, or varying the drip rate and keeping the strobe rate constant? It seems like the drip rate is being varied to get different effects.

Also, his page lists highlighters as the source of a flourescing pigment- Really? Highlighters glow under UV?

I bet he's just varying the strobe rate based on the feedback from a photogate that the drip has to fall through and "offsetting" the frequency to get the drip to "move".

And yes quite many higlighter pens are UV active, I have some pictures of my nitrogen laser beaming to couple of solutions of higlighter pen ink and water. I'll upload and link them when I get home.

Firnagzen

Thu Sept 13 2007, 10:26AM

Registered Member #567 Joined: Tue Mar 06 2007, 10:55AM
Location: Singapore
Posts: 147

I did a bit of thinking, and I think that you could actually vary either of the variables, strobe light or drip rate. The idea is to have either of them not at the same frequency at each other, anyway, so you get a new frequency of times the droplets shows up at, I think.

Hm. I think I'll do this after I finish a tesla coil... My allegiance is still to high voltages!

Ps. I wonder if you could combine high voltage and a time fountain?

Coronafix

Thu Sept 13 2007, 12:17PM

Registered Member #160 Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 02:07AM
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 938

He is using an op amp as a sensor, this feeds to a PIC that has an internal comparator.
Both strobe and pump are run at the other end of this by some transistors.

Dago

Thu Sept 13 2007, 12:35PM

Registered Member #538 Joined: Sun Feb 18 2007, 08:33PM
Location: Finland
Posts: 181

Here are the pictures I promised: Some paper, two diffrent inks, a green ruler, orange pen and my fingertip excited with a small quickly thrown together TEA-nitrogen laser running in open air:

Avalanche

Thu Sept 13 2007, 05:51PM

Registered Member #103 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:16PM
Location: Derby, UK
Posts: 845

wow, those things are spectacular. I guess the biggest problem would be getting the drip size and probably less importantly the drip frequency constant, for the 'real time manipulation'. Anyone have any thoughts for the dripper? It'd be interesting to scale the whole thing up a bit!

CT2

Thu Sept 13 2007, 09:19PM

Registered Member #180 Joined: Thu Feb 16 2006, 02:12AM
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 187

I saw this thread last night (befor anyone posted) and I quickly ran downstairs and lashed up a 555 timer and a few green leds (no UV ones). I used a piece of pvc insulation from 14AWG house wire as my tube for dripping, I stuck that into a water bottle cap and then used a screw to squeez the tube and adjust drip rate. To my surprise it actually worked! Not very smoothly and not perfect but it worked none the less! I could make the drops fall, rise and kind of hover for a second or so. I'm going to build a nice one and get it working good. I wasn't able to get pictures of it running because its too dark and you can't see the drops... need brighter LED's.

Edit: Pics

Was unable to get pics/vid of it running because of lighting (well lack of). I need to go shopping for some parts, I think I'll start a project soon.

Dr. Slack

Fri Sept 14 2007, 07:25AM

Registered Member #72 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659

I would guess the hardest part of that would be getting a consistent stream of droplets at a high enough rate. I would expect that a drip per second could be extremely consistent, but speeding it up to perhaps the 10 per second needed for optical persistance would get into flow instability.

Or am I just worrying without having tried it?

My mind is already spinning forward to how to use (for instance) the pressure fluctuations from a fish-tank air pump to somehow synchronise the drops to mains frequency (not a good thing with already terminal polyprojectitus)

Does anyone have any hard data for drip rate, nozzle size, flow rate etc?

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