Note: instructions for an even-more-ultimate laser show are coming soon, in the meantime check out a sneak peek of it in action.

This is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever made. It’s quite a step up from the Five Dollar Laser Show I posted a bit back. The only logical step after building that was to drastically increase the power and number of beams. I loved the effect that it generated, but it wasn’t bright enough, and only covered a small portion of the wall.

This my first attempt at solving those two issues, I think it worked out pretty well. Here’s the new version in action on the ceiling of my living room.

It’s quite an effect, and rather hypnotizing – it’s quite easy to zone out and become completely absorbed in the music. The multiple vibrating beams coming out of the unit also look amazing when fog or smoke is in the room.

Even the most ADHD-addled individual, myself included, tends to go “whoa”. You can also do cool things like hooking it up to a microphone and watching the patterns your voice makes. A disco ball or mirrors stuck to the ceiling help spread the effect around even more.

So how does one go about making one of these things? Well, I made every effort to make construction as simple as possible for two reasons. One, electrical engineering is far from my speciality and I didn’t want to kill myself/ruin a laser I could only afford one of. Two, I always hated seeing incredibly awesome projects on the internet that I never had any hope of building due to funds and bizarre parts. That’s not to say you don’t need some basic soldering and construction skills, as well as a healthy respect for the power of laser light, but it’s definitely doable if you put your mind to it.

The full details are in the links below, but what you basically need are a heatsinked lab style laser (so it can run for a few hours, high power laser pointers will get too hot), a diffraction grating, a pair of old headphones, and a few electrical parts to tie it all together.

So if you’re the type who enjoys projects, I strongly recommend giving this a shout – it’s proof positive that you can obtain amazing results without the backing of a large electronics company. If you do end up building one, please send me a link to the results so I can see how it turns out!

Instructions