Back in the 1970s, my friend Wayne Gillis and I used to do light shows at science fiction conventions. We had the usual panoply of overhead, slide, and custom-made projectors, and a single, very expensive, helium-neon laser from Edmund Scientific. Calling ourselves Light Opera, and later, Illuminatus, we performed at ConFusion conventions in Ann Arbor, […]
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Whether you’re at a Bangkok hostel or backpacking in Goa, you can rock out to your favorite tunes with these portable Rock ’n’ Roll Speakers, a set of customizable, low-fi travel speakers that allow you to take your music everywhere. The speakers are driven by a simple power amplifier circuit and a tilt switch. With […]
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In 1976, Atari introduced Atari Video Music, a plugged-in music visualizer designed by Pong creator Bob Brown that bridged the yawning gap between consumers’ stereos and their TV sets. The quirky, psychedelic pixelation device never caught on, but watching it in action today (check it out on YouTube), one is taken back to another time, […]
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Make the cub scout rocket derby a blast.
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Use a 555 timer to make an LED blink like the one in a security camera.
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