Put simply, this Bluetooth speaker moves in response to music, but it’s much more than just that. It’s a groovy space-age dream of musical visualisation—the lava lamp of the future, today and is the brainchild of Hackaday maker Dakd Jung.
A chamber in the middle of the speaker contains a liquid that dances to the beat of whatever is played via the Bluetooth music maker, and you can even adjust the behaviour of that liquid on the fly by twiddling the knobs on the front of the box.
The project involves reprocessing the magnetically attracted, dancing ferrofluid used inside the speaker to give it more of that smooth lava lamp aesthetic. Because ferrofluid has a habit of sticking to glass surfaces, treatment of the water was necessary to remove the spiky look you apparently often get when playing with ferrofluid and magnets.
There’s no note on the exact treatment used, but generally speaking the addition of isopropyl alcohol to the liquid should create the desired effect.
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The mechanism itself is operated via dials on the front of the case, which edit the behaviour of the ferrofluid using an electromagnetic device. Aside from the ferrofluid concoction, and fully 3D printed housing designed by Jung himself, an ‘MSGEQ7’ graphic equaliser display module was employed, along with a passive radiator, and two upward-facing speakers to complete the project.
But you don’t care about that… look at the dancing liquid, man.
Though if you are interested as to how the ferrofluid speaker performs when faced with different kinds of music, here’s a link to the Instagram page where Jung has posted some further sound tests.
As always, keep on making!