For my second project, I really wanted to paly with lasers. A member of the class did their first project on the use of sound with lasers in the sense of attaching a mirror to the speaker and bouncing a laser off it, creating a veritable laser light show in time to the music. I like music and I like pretty, potentially dangerous lights so I figured the combination was a winning one! But I decided to put my own twist on the project.

Initially I was planning to build the system into an old laser toy gun that I had lying around and send my voice through it so that I could wander around beaming my voice places. But it was wisely pointed out to me that a man wandering around with a gun and talking to himself is generally frowned upon in today's society. And so I decided to fall back on plan B.

Plan B of course became an innocuous system, meant to transmit music to nearby, properly setup speaker systems. No guns involved, and with the circuit totally exposed. Although after the Boston incidents, having it open seems far more dangerous to my person than installing it in a toy gun...

Fortunately that circuit was a simple one and with the use of a solar cell over a phototransistor, I was able to recieve a vey clear and powerful signal. The difference is amazing. Because of the simplicity of the cicuit however, I decided to add a bit more to my project and create a secondary fake circuit that would allow me to transmit my thoughts over the speakers instead of just music. So a little bit of recording, some cleverly modified speakers and a fake circuit complete with giant parabolic dish and tinfoil hat later, I had a much more fun project. With the laser and toe-controlled Ipod hidden under the table, I put on a bit of a show and pretended to beam my thoughts to a nearby set of speakers. Barring some technical difficulties, it still went over quite well!

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