Vic’s creations
Musical Laser Rainbow Machine
The Musical Laser Rainbow Machine makes music into colored laser patterns of light that move and respond to the music. Music is divided into 6 frequency bands. Three beams of light are projected, two of those beams are made by combining red, green and blue lasers, and the third beam is red. Seven lasers are changing in intensity with 6 frequency bands of music. It was featured with full instructions on how to build it in Nuts and Volts Magazine, May/June 2018, cover story.
Here the laser beams are made visible with smoke. Three beams exit at the left, where they would normally go through rotating pieces of lumpy clear glass. The upper and lower beams are a combination of red, green and blue lasers, which are combined by going through mirrors that pass one or two colors and reflect another color.
Castle In the Clouds
A 3D printed castle is floating in air by magnetic levitation. Electricity is wirelessly transferred to the castle from below, to light the window of the castle and the clouds.
An article on the construction of this has been published in Nuts & Volts Magazine in Issue 6 of the 2019 edition (released in July 2020).
The Graphing Weather Station
This weather station graphs different aspects of the weather, displaying them on a color touch screen.
A complete article on its function and construction has been published in Nuts & Volts Magazine, in Issue 1 of the 2020 edition.
It measures and graphs indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity for the last 24 hours, wind speed for the last 24 hours and current wind direction, barometric pressure for 24 hours, rainfall for the last 24 hours and also rainfall for the last 17 days. It also displays the time, and a re-settable record level for the wind speed and the total rainfall for the season.
Updates to the program and a new design for the radiation shield are included, along with a page of information, in the WeatherStationUpdate2.zip file
The Graphing Altimeter
Here is an altimeter that i designed, which tell your elevation and gives a graph of where you have been. It covers 8 ranges of time. I wrote an article on how to make it, which is published in Nuts and Volts Magazine, 2022 Issue-5.
Here are the outdoor elements to the weather station. The anemometer is on the left, wind vane with electronic compass on the right, self-emptying rain gauge lower front, and radiation-shielded temperature and humidity sensor lower back.
Wizard's Run is a Rolling Ball Sculpture featuring a ball-levitating wizard, four balls bouncing through the air, an unusual "wobble lift", and a flying magic carpet.
video on YouTube.
another video of some more details.
Vic's Rolling Ball Sculpture has a circus theme, with a flying helicopter, a clown firing a ball out of a cannon, and other delights.
A garden of insects, performing as a water fountain.
Backpacking Banjo
A banjo designed for backpacking: it weighs 3 pounds including the case. More…
Cat-Can Dobro
The Cat Can Dobro is a type of slide guitar. I made my plans for this instrument for the Boy Scouts to help them complete the Music Merit Badge. More…
Marble Coaster
My first Rolling Ball Sculpture. It got me started making crazy things. I thought maybe people would think I was a little crazy making such a silly thing. Then it won Best of Show at the county fair, then “Creativity Award” (the top prize) at California State Fair’s Best of Show competition, went on the front page of the local newspaper, and I decided that people like crazy machines.
