{"id":2576,"date":"2020-04-17T09:16:18","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T14:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/?p=2576"},"modified":"2020-04-17T10:16:50","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T15:16:50","slug":"laser-show-motor-controller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/2020\/04\/17\/laser-show-motor-controller\/","title":{"rendered":"Laser Show Motor Controller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a fun idea I had while quarantined during the 2020 pandemic. I have a bunch of these cheap laser modules that can easily be driven from an Arduino with 5V, and they only draw 20mA of current. I also have a handful of cheap vibration motors. What happens when you mount vibration motors on a laser? Well, it turns out you can make a cool laser show!<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Laser Show Motor Controller\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LamcX1Kpm8c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what I used:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Arduino<\/li>\n<li>SN754410 quad half H-bridge chip<\/li>\n<li>laser module from AliExpress<\/li>\n<li>2 cell phone vibration motors from AliExpress<\/li>\n<li>4 10K pots to control motor speeds, laser PWM duty cycle, and laser PWM frequency<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-2573\" src=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController-980x735.jpg 980w, https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController-480x360.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The motors are mounted perpendicular to one another, and when you change the speed of the motors, the vibrations cause the laser to oscillate in chaotic patterns. They look a lot like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lissajous_curve\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Lissajous figures<\/a> you see on an oscilloscope. This makes sense, of course, because the motors cause periodic oscillations along different axes. There are also pots to control the PWM duty cycle and PWM frequency. This leads to even more interesting visualizations.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_top.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_top-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-2574\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_top-980x735.jpg 980w, https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_top-480x360.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I made the circuit on an Arduino shield prototyping board. I didn&#8217;t say it was pretty.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_bottom.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_bottom-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-2575\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_bottom-980x735.jpg 980w, https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_bottom-480x360.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/nootropicdesign\/laser-show-motor-controller\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">The code is on GitHub<\/a>, and here is the schematic so you can build it yourself with the things you have lying around. Have fun!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_schematic.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_schematic-1024x764.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"764\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-2572\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_schematic-980x731.png 980w, https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/laserShowMotorController_schematic-480x358.png 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a fun idea I had while quarantined during the 2020 pandemic. I have a bunch of these cheap laser modules that can easily be driven from an Arduino with 5V, and they only draw 20mA of current. I also have a handful of cheap vibration motors. What happens when you mount vibration motors on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arduino","category-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2576"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2587,"href":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576\/revisions\/2587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nootropicdesign.com\/projectlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}