Warrl wrote: ↑Sat Jun 16, 2018 5:36 pm
Dadrobit, do you or your dad happen to know a guy by the name of Glytchmeister?
There are two versions of him. The fictional one is an electronics/computer/mechanical genius seemingly congenitally incapable of asking himself "should I really be building this?". The real one writes the fictional one.
Nah, different guy, but he is a crazy smart electronics/computer/mechanical dude as well and does this stuff for giggles. Teaches welding/electronics/video game design at the local high school and community college.
Example Flamethrower
Spoiler!
Example Death Truck
Spoiler!
Re: What made you smile today? Round 2!
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 2:19 am
by Technic[Bot]
Dadrobit wrote: ↑Sat Jun 16, 2018 5:12 am
Just got back from a party at grandma's and had a conversation with my pops.
Dad: "Hey, Dadrobit, you do audio stuff right?"
Dadrobit: "Yeah, for sure, what do you need?
Dad: "A Disco ball flamethrower that jets out fire to the beats of music!"
Dadrobit: "..... Sure, let's do that."
So that's a thing we're gonna try to make happen sometime in the near future.
So yeah that project is very firmly standing on the "feasible" side of the spectrum.
That firebending setup is off the hook!
Right now pops is out of state, and when he gets back, we're first gonna concentrate on building his shop. Then the discoball flamethrower happens!
But the early plan we have going is to take the signal from the music, isolate the low end and gate it so that only strong bursts of signal get through on a second/AUX channel, (theoretically that'll catch the beat pretty well) and use that burst signal to open a relay that engages the flamethrowers in the discoball. Simple enough.
But if we can't get consistent/good looking results with a set it and forget it setting on a board, I'll just get a playlist and manually program the signal.
So yeah that project is very firmly standing on the "feasible" side of the spectrum.
That firebending setup is off the hook!
Right now pops is out of state, and when he gets back, we're first gonna concentrate on building his shop. Then the discoball flamethrower happens!
But the early plan we have going is to take the signal from the music, isolate the low end and gate it so that only strong bursts of signal get through on a second/AUX channel, (theoretically that'll catch the beat pretty well) and use that burst signal to open a relay that engages the flamethrowers in the discoball. Simple enough.
But if we can't get consistent/good looking results with a set it and forget it setting on a board, I'll just get a playlist and manually program the signal.
Soo, lowpass filter the audio, then a capacitor to flatten the signal, then feed it into a digital input (very crudely speaking, probably needs more signal processing)
Right now pops is out of state, and when he gets back, we're first gonna concentrate on building his shop. Then the discoball flamethrower happens!
But the early plan we have going is to take the signal from the music, isolate the low end and gate it so that only strong bursts of signal get through on a second/AUX channel, (theoretically that'll catch the beat pretty well) and use that burst signal to open a relay that engages the flamethrowers in the discoball. Simple enough.
But if we can't get consistent/good looking results with a set it and forget it setting on a board, I'll just get a playlist and manually program the signal.
Personally I would output the audio signal digitally from source, like a laptop, store a reasonable number of samples in a chunk of memory, any microcontroller will do, around 128 samples per chunk might be a good number, and compute the signal power of every chunk. then you can feed that result to a gas servo-valve. So the more powerful the chunk of signal the bigger flame you will get. Never used gas servo-valves so if that turns out is too complicated for this case you can use a simpler on/off valve/solenoid and threshold the power of the signal chunk. If is more than a certain value open the valve and close it otherwise.
Also i proposed a gas servo-valve since i assume your flamethrower is gas based. I would strongly advice against using liquid based fuel since it is very hard to contain.
Another more sophisticated idea would be to hack a midi-controller to output to the solenoid and the motor on the disco ball instead of leds. This would give you more control over the fire flow but it is definitely more complex.
Re: What made you smile today? Round 2!
Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2018 2:53 am
by Dadrobit
Lordadmiral Drake wrote: ↑Sun Jul 01, 2018 8:54 pm
Soo, lowpass filter the audio, then a capacitor to flatten the signal, then feed it into a digital input (very crudely speaking, probably needs more signal processing)
The biggest issue is going to come from processing the music itself I think. A low pass filter will get the range of the beat, but the problem is going to come from how one song was created to the next. A huge issue is the dynamic compression that is so incredibly prevalent. The loudness of the beat for many songs is only just as loud as everything else. Or perhaps I should say that everything else in the song is just as loud as the beat. So even when I put a gate on it, it's either almost always open, or if I really put a heavy gate to catch the beat, the same settings may not work for the next song on the list because their dynamic range is handled differently. Balancing this is a big priority as you don't want the ball to be inactive for some songs, and spinning erratically for others.
Technic[Bot] wrote: ↑Mon Jul 02, 2018 12:34 am
Personally I would output the audio signal digitally from source, like a laptop...
The issue being that it's going to have to come from the mixboard that they have on site. They really want it to be so that it will work even while being mixed live on the fly. If we can't get it looking good like that, I'll just pre-program the pyrotechnics beforehand and just streamline everything yeah.
Also, no motor in the ball, it's going to spin off of the propane jets we'll be pumping out.
Re: What made you smile today? Round 2!
Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2018 4:43 am
by Warrl
So you don't want just a simple threshold switch coming off the low-pass filter - you want a dynamic switch, that opens when the signal is X% stronger than its average over the last Y seconds, and closes when it isn't (or perhaps after some preset amount of time). When it closes, maybe it should stay closed for some preset amount of time before even considering opening again.
Such gear may or may not already exist. I have barely-more-than-zero relevant expertise.
Technic[Bot] wrote: ↑Mon Jul 02, 2018 12:34 am
Personally I would output the audio signal digitally from source, like a laptop...
The issue being that it's going to have to come from the mixboard that they have on site. They really want it to be so that it will work even while being mixed live on the fly. If we can't get it looking good like that, I'll just pre-program the pyrotechnics beforehand and just streamline everything yeah.
Also, no motor in the ball, it's going to spin off of the propane jets we'll be pumping out.
Well having purpose specific hardware "talk" with other hardware is always complicated and i have never used that kind of device. In case you can output the signal in analog form you can use any cheap ADC to read it into a computer or microcontroller. You will probably loose some quality but for your purposes is not relevant.
Good luck on the project, let us see when is finished!
Re: What made you smile today? Round 2!
Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2018 3:14 am
by Dadrobit
Warrl wrote: ↑Tue Jul 03, 2018 4:43 am
Such gear may or may not already exist. I have barely-more-than-zero relevant expertise.
Yeah, what you're talking about is more or less an RMS (Root Mean Square) sensor. It measures the power/amplitude of a sound over a period of time and spits out the average db levels. The problem is two part in that I do not know if the board has a built in RMS sensor, (I'm betting it doesn't) and I do not know how, or even if you would be able to then side chain that sensor into something like a variable dependent gate. It's a good idea though, and I've sent a text over to one of my old professors asking about that possibility.
Technic[Bot] wrote: ↑Tue Jul 03, 2018 11:50 pm
Good luck on the project, let us see when is finished!
Yeah, my own experience is mostly in field recording raw audio, working in the studio working on studio boards, and sitting in front of DAWs like Pro Tools to manipulate audio in post production. Working live events and on live mix boards is not my forte, this is a good learning experience for me. I'll definitely be updating here once we're in the project!
Also, I've contacted some of my old professors on this matter. They're in on it as well now to help me out.
Some of our initial conversation on the matter in the spoiler
Spoiler!
H Bomb is Keith's nickname if you hadn't got that.
Warrl wrote: ↑Tue Jul 03, 2018 4:43 am
Such gear may or may not already exist. I have barely-more-than-zero relevant expertise.
Yeah, what you're talking about is more or less an RMS (Root Mean Square) sensor. It measures the power/amplitude of a sound over a period of time and spits out the average db levels. The problem is two part in that I do not know if the board has a built in RMS sensor, (I'm betting it doesn't) and I do not know how, or even if you would be able to then side chain that sensor into something like a variable dependent gate. It's a good idea though, and I've sent a text over to one of my old professors asking about that possibility.
Just my last thoughts into this:
Spoiler!
If you like to keep everything analogue there are commercially available RMS to DC sensors. This if from Analog Devices but Texas instruments is superb on anything signal processing. You can then Adjust the output via a simple op-amp circuit and feed it into a low side N channel MOSFET to control the solenoid or whatever power hungry effector you use for the flow control.
And again good luck on this. For what i gather it will be a lot of fun!
Got to watch Princess Mononoke on the big screen at the local theater last night with my brother, it was pretty awesomesauce! Haven't gotten around to watching that movie since I was back in highschool forever ago, but it was always up there near the top as one of my favorite movies.
Re: What made you smile today? Round 2!
Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2018 1:05 am
by Dadrobit
Does it count as a double post if it's 5 months later and no one's updated the threadnaught?
Anywho, my parents are both teachers at the same school and are retiring after this fall semester due to administration being literally the worst kind of people and prioritizing interpersonal politics and their own general incompetence in favor of enabling their teachers to actually teach. My father in particular has been teacher for around 30 years and had been at his current school since the school first opened 20 years ago and is only one of three other people at that school that can say the same. In celebration of their, (slightly) early retirement, we all spent the day out together with some of the other original teachers and had a small lunch party after classes were over reminiscing over all the funny/horrific stories they all had garnered from the school in that time. Spent a good 6 hours just chatting with them. One in particular was my old physics teacher that we used to go dirt biking with, so it was nice to just catch up after a few years.
Re: What made you smile today? Round 2!
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2019 7:05 am
by Neutral Smith
I've been here for 5 years now...
Time flies.
Re: What made you smile today? Round 2!
Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 10:28 pm
by Tesla Foxtrot
As Jahar said. This is a home. And hes right. This is like a home and it feels like a place i would call home.
