[sdiy] Circle Machine prototype

[Amos]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Harry Bissell <harrybissell at wowway.com> wrote:
> Another take on the circle machine...
> http://www.drumbuddy.com/
> (hey. it could work...)

The Drum Buddy and its inventor are pure awesome.  Quintron can really
play that thing live.

On a related topic, a friend of mine made a rather nice optical audio
transmitter-thingy using a dollar-store laser pointer, power
transistor and phototransistor... used the power transistor to
modulate the power to the laser with audio (input audio to base of
power transistor), then aimed the laser at the phototransistor, which
essentially modulated +VDC to reproduce the audio.  Worked quite well!
 I've wondered if there aren't any exotic materials you could pass the
laser light through in order to get some sord of optical-modulation
effects device.  Of course, delay would be out of the question unless
you had a number of miles over which to set this up...

(hey, how bout an analog delay that works by bouncing audio-modulated
laser light off the Moon?  Sorry, too much coffee this morning....)

_A