22. I have always wanted to take 307,200 monitors out into the desert, lay them on their backs and drive each one as a pixel (640x480). More resolution, more monitors.
I figured on just sending a particular single color to each monitor, but if you really wanted to get fancy and had the horsepower, maybe you could do the photomosaic thing and send images instead.
Since I have many big ideas and even more laziness, I think this is a job for someone else. Any takers?
Posted at 1:26PM on Feb 25th 2008 by lelandwitter
23. I friend of mine is collecting old CRT monitors and televisions in order to make a small tesla coil. IM not sure the exact workings of it but if i understand it correctly he is using the transformer that puts a charge on the front of the glass. He will aqquire as many as he can and connect them in a serise and then use them too release one large high voltage low amperage charge. I will try to post a link to somre more information later if i get it.
Posted at 2:09PM on Feb 25th 2008 by Tom
24. Or if you have a whole bunch of tv's and monitors, make the jacobs ladders in addition to a tesla coil or a mosquito zapper or something.
Posted at 2:30PM on Feb 25th 2008 by Mike
25. if they're shallow enough, say 12" deep, then line a load up and point them at a wall, still hooked into your usual outputs. levoila! Worlds largest ambilight - with extremely good colour reproduction.
OR
Use the shell as a bin.
OR
use the coffee table idea, but hijack the cable and send a slow cycle of white noise through each channel in turn.
Posted at 3:00PM on Feb 25th 2008 by mike
28. alex,
Note: the following is potentially dangerous. crt screens can hold a big charge for a long time after being unplugged and can serious mess you up or even kill you. what follows does not contain any safety information so if you don't know what you're doing then don't mess with this stuff.
Steve's description is pretty similar to what I used to do. While I did use the vertical scan signal at times to produce a more traditional waveform, I found that using one speaker to drive the horizontal and one to drive the vertical made more interesting patterns. basically I'd find the wires that go to the two coils at the back of the tube. If they could be unplugged I'd unplug them but sometimes I'd just cut them. I did this on probably 5 different montiors for various people and it was always a bit different.
Anyhow, after cutting the two wires leading to a coil I'd then take a wire leading from my stereo to my speaker ($200 sharp all in one from a big box store, nothing nice) and wire the coil either in series or parallel with the speaker. Sometimes series would work better, sometimes parallel would. Then I'd do the same with the other speaker and the other coil. Again, each coil was different so I might do parallel on one and series on the other. Whatever produced the most deflection without going off the screen. I'd be playing music through it the whole time and turn it on occasionally to test.
So in the end I'd have the left speaker doing vertical deflection and the right speaker doing horizontal. When sound was coming out of both speakers I'd get crazy spirograph type patterns. When sound was mostly out of one side or the other the patterns would be mostly horizontal or vertical. pink floyd would have lots of transitions from one to the other.
The patterns were always very reactive to the music, unlike many visualizers in itunes or whatnot. more volume made for bigger patterns. bass made for big loops, higher tones for tighter loops.
I should note that one monitor I did this to started smoking almost immediately. I assume this is because the power that should have been going from the sawtooth waveform generators to the coils for h and v scan was now not going anywhere. if I had been more sophisticated I'd have measured the resistance of the coils and put resistors on the wires coming out of the board to replace the coils.
Again old Apple ][ and c=64 monitors always worked. I sent a friend a Mac classic modded to plug into his stereo for his birthday and he still has it and it still runs 10 years later.
I am in the process of putting together a website that will host my software projects. I'll include the iTunes pluggin that mimics the green screen effect and the winamp pluggin that I wrote if I can find it.
Given that my current project combines wiimote head tracking with laser pointer detection for a fps game (I've got it all working but need to add polish like explosions) I'm thinking that you might be interested in posting a link to the site when it goes live in a few weeks.
Posted at 3:58PM on Feb 25th 2008 by a random John
29. Videowall is an option
http://www.kiberpipa.org/~igzebedze/cp/vw-howto/
Only in Slovene language but if you need any quick translation I can help :)
Posted at 6:22PM on Feb 25th 2008 by christooss
30. i'm surprised that noone has mentioned building a 'lifter' yet.
http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/lift2exp/index.htm
some of the power supplies for these were taken from old CRT monitors. (Note: the specific link is in french, but most of the site is in english)
Posted at 7:14PM on Feb 25th 2008 by silic0re
31. silic0re the lifter was way back!
lelandwitter u buy the screens, cables, genorator and i'll carry them and lay then out in the desert and pic the image to go on them. hmmm gotesex!! imagin the astronoughts throughing up in their spacesuites ROLF!!
i hear all the 'real' rockstars drop them out of a penthouse window... now post that on utube and u'll be famous ;D
Posted at 8:44PM on Feb 25th 2008 by HeBD
32. we have my $3 diy hv powersupply
http://www.instructables.com/id/reupdated-Simple-flyback-driver/ if u want me to fix the grammer juet shoot me an email to hvhaxor@gmail.com
Posted at 9:39PM on Feb 25th 2008 by alex mccown
34. note that the following hack-a-day link seems to cover what I did 10 years ago but without the spirograph effect:
http://www.hackaday.com/2006/11/05/mac-se-30-audio-visualizer/
Posted at 10:33PM on Feb 25th 2008 by a random John
36. I want someone who knows about TV innards to make a howto for hooking RGB signals directly into the CRT driver circuit, bypassing the NTSC junk (like the SCART connector in Europe).
Why? Because (most) game systems output RGB, but with a 15KHz horiz sync that VGA monitors can't use. Since analog TV's will be pretty much useless by next year (converter box? puh-lease...) they might as well be converted into (relatively) high quality videogame monitors.
Posted at 11:02PM on Feb 25th 2008 by Rhymes with Seamus
37. Linux on Obsolete Displays: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/bchafy/lood.html
Basically, through hardware and software hackery, use one VGA output to drive three discrete (greyscale) signals. IMO for stuff like coding, console/server stuff, and word processing, it's not too terribly bad.
Pretty sure I've seen it posted here originally.
Posted at 2:20AM on Feb 26th 2008 by DanAdamKOF
38. You can use a crt monitor as a HV psu capable of providing about 30 KV, very easy to do. All you have to do is open up the monitor, pull off the the lead with the suction cup connected to the back of the crt (+ voltage) and then use the chassis as ground. Its that easy and also very dangerous!
Posted at 4:07AM on Feb 26th 2008 by sidewaysdan
39. Build a Tesla coil?
http://www.aaroncake.net/circuits/hvgen.asp
Posted at 6:33AM on Feb 26th 2008 by pi3832
40. In keeping with this idea maybe some projects using old televisions would be good as well.
the digital broadcast switchover means that there will be some good trash pickings coming up very soon in the way of functional television sets thrown out by the rich and the ignorant.
(ghod bless 'em)
of course you should be careful.
don't want some damn fool zapping themselves with a flyback.
...or do we?
Posted at 8:05AM on Feb 26th 2008 by strider_mt2k
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21. It would be very hard to do, but it is possible a CRT could be converted to a vector monitor. Perfect for playing Asteroids, perhaps under MAME.
You would have to replace all the control circuits, probably with an FPGA and three ADCs (x/y/intensity).
Posted at 1:21PM on Feb 25th 2008 by MoJo