Ladies & Gentlemen, we have wobblevision!

[Circuitbenders]

Here are some photos of the latest circuitbenders creation, a 5 inch black&white TV converted into a Wobblevision. Simply connect the speaker outputs from an amp to the CRT deflection yoke which controls the vertical and horizontal movement of the electron beam and you get the audio displayed as patterns on the screen!







Heres some links to how to do this mod but if you are going to try it we can't say enough, BE VERY VERY CAREFUL! Even after TV's and monitors have been switched off for some time they can still hold enough voltage to kill you dead instantly, you won't get any second chances. Don't attempt this mod on any TV unless you are confident that you really know what you are doing.

http://electro-music.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=45087&sid=0bdacd969472eaf40f36f255309deed8
http://web.archive.org/web/20010810094536/users.ev1.net/~bantha/bending/wobble.html
http://www.electronic-projects.net/Electronic-Projects/projects/telescope/index.shtml

[bod]

nice one! i did the same mods to a couple of Mac Classic's recently for a night club installation, but these wee tv's are great!!

well done boys!

i really need to post up some stuff about my NES and Mega Drive units some time soon since its a little quiet round here.
we need more vj toys/bends!!!!!!!!

cheers,

bod.

[Circuitbenders]

Heres a link to a rather low res video of a mini TV wobblevision dancing to some breakbeat stuff. They seem to really like  the low end bass and breakbeat percussion.

http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/demos/wobblebreakvid.avi

[Circuitbenders]

Old green screen BBC Micro monitor dancing to a bit of hardfloor.

and theres a phrase you don't hear every day 

[dnny]

nice one - the pic is great.

have you tried to boost the brightness whit extra coil?
its cosmic. but its hazardous also...

the thing that happened to my Philips TX is that i tried to get the most of it and i used a random coil i savaged from somewhere.

so i connected the coil lets say it was 50mH to the points of horizontal and horizontal ground of the Deflection Circuit(Board) - and wow it was cosmic - the beam was so bright - it was just like looking to sun. well i realized that the unit heated a lot - so i attached two ventilators . . . and i took it to "koneisto" ( The Festival For Electronic Music in Helsinki) it was in stage whit Aavikko. it lasted one hour all most the whole gig and died of over heating   but i have to say that no TV has ever be so bright! all the time it looked that it will explode any minute

this is the setup what i did -


so i have been looking for the next TV (victim) to my experiments -
and foud this -



it´s old CRT projector so i thought that it would be nice to have three different beams projected.

and meanwhile Censtron has made their first color vessel:

We just finished making the first Color Wave Vessel, with it you can now make the visualizations any color from invisible to white. Check out the auction for more information.

have some of you any idea how the color controll is done ?

take care
daniel

[Circuitbenders]

That CRT projector could possibly become the coolest thing on the planet with enough power behind it, i may have to try and find a similar piece of scrap, i'm sure some VJ guys i know won't mind me hacking their projector apart in tha name of science

At a guess i would imagine that the colour version is done simply by using a colour TV or monitor that has little RGB preset pots on the board at the back of the tube. Normally they would be set so that the beam is white but adjusting the amount of each colour should change the colour of the trace. Looks like Censtrom has brought the 3 RGB pots out to knobs on the side of the case.

That brightness mod looks lethal, isn't there some danger of X-rays at that point, especially round the back of the tube where you don't have the lead shielding? I was going to try fooling a couple of monitors i've got so they would stop shutting down the tube when you disconnect the coil by just attaching another coil to the board, hmmmmm.

[dnny]

That brightness mod looks lethal, isn't there some danger of X-rays at that point, especially round the back of the tube where you don't have the lead shielding?

the maximum X-radiation from any CRT-model on market at ANY given voltage before the tube collapses  is
100mGy/h (milliGrays per hour) . and that radiation is the maximum value measured just before it dies.
( source: The Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland)
so it is not so much - cause you need 100Gy to get symptoms.
if you get radiation you should notice "sun burns" in effected areas.

but ok, i don't recommend the "cosmic- brightness mod" to anyone.

it might take me some time to get on that projector-project done  -  i want to mount it in a box - and don't have one ready.

take care and be safe

daniel

[Circuitbenders]

Does anyone know how to fool a VGA monitor that its attached to a PC when its not, so that it doesn't just shut down or go into standby due to having no signal input?

I've managed to make an incredibly bright colour wobblevision from an old VGA monitor with pots for the RGB amounts (kindly labelled R-cut, G-cut and B-cut on the board) but it only works if it has the VGA lead plugged into a switched on computer. I'm told theres a way of fooling it by shorting pins on the cable but i can't work it out.

[the_zombiest]

I just bought an old black n' white tv for a fiver.  I really want to give this a bash, but it's giving me the chronic fear.  I see that big bad blue capacitor and the suction cup of impending doom and i dunno if i'm ready for it...

Also, i'm confused about the audio aspect of it.  Looking at censtrons wave vessel, it has audio in via a 1/4 jack... yours uses phono. What are the pros and cons and how do you set up the phono sockets?

As i said, i really want to do this mod, but i also don't want to die. 

[Circuitbenders]

On the centron ones the 1/4 inch jack means can't swap the connections around much despite the switch. On my early ones i used phono sockets as they were all i had to hand but 4 way sprung speaker terminals work just as well and you can wire your speaker cables straight into them.

To get the maximum number of different displays i use a 4 way terminal block wired to the 4 connectors on the deflection yoke as the YOKE IN and opposite it i have another 4 way terminal block wired to the corresponding points on the board where the deflection yoke would normally be connected as the BOARD OUT. Its usually safer to desolder the wires at the yoke end and extend them for the BOARD OUT rather than messing around trying to remove them from the main board. With nothing connected to the YOKE IN you should get a single dot in the centre of the screen if its going to work at all.

In theory if you've wired it up right you should be able to connect each terminal socket to the one opposite it with a bit of wire and it should still work like a normal TV. If you take stereo left and right speaker outputs and attach them to the 4 sockets of the YOKE IN you should get patterns drawn on the screen, you can swap the arrangement of the inputs around and you will get slightly different patterns but NEVER plug a speaker cable into the BOARD OUT side. I've had a mini TV burst into flames doing that.

If you just use one speaker channel (2 leads) plugged into the YOKE IN and then attach the other two YOKE IN sockets to any 2 BOARD OUT sockets with wire you get different displays such as vertical lines and cross hatching. Most TV's seem to be different so you'll have to experiment

Anyway, its only about 24,000 volts................what are you scared of?

[the_zombiest]

i think i understand now.

the 8 phono sockets on yours at the top of the page are connected to the terminal blocks.  4 yoke in and 4 board out... i still don't fully understand actually... and i don't want to spontaneously combust.

I'll have a crack at the censtron method and once confident (and if I'm still alive) i'll have a go with the could-result-in-a-fiery-demise-if-the-wrong-patch-lead-is-put-in-the-wrong-phono-socket way.

Cheers.

[Circuitbenders]

The 4 outer phono sockets with the plugs in them on the mini TV above are the YOKE IN sockets.The leads plugged into them are speaker outputs from an amp. The other 4 inner sockets are connected to the wires from the board that would normally connect to the yoke, what i'm calling the BOARD OUT.

On my more recent wobblevisions i have just replaced the two sets of 4 phono sockets with 2 X 4 way sprung speaker terminal blocks as they are easier to connect speaker wire to.

[the_zombiest]

I totally understand now.  Thank you for all your help.  Once i get my hands on another little TV, i'll try it with the 4 phono for yoke in / board out.  However, my first TV bend worked out quite well!  click on the image to see a vid.
Thanks again Mr. Circuitbenders, Many a karmic reward to you.

[steve0913]

Ive also started working on a wobblevision with a VGA monitor. The yoke deflection will be controlled by the amplitude of course, but i am also trying to get the color controlled by the pitch. I am going to do this by using low, middle, and high -pass filters to seperate the audio into three signals. The low signal goes to the blue pin, the middle to green, and the high to red on the VGA connector. I am using an monitor from an old Compaq Windows 3.1 computer and it seems to work without being hooked up to a computer...

The only problem im having is the audio signal is very low voltage and I need to get it up to 5V to get the monitor to recognize the signal. i dont really know how to do that

[the_zombiest]

is modding a colour tv the same as a B&W? 
I've not looked inside a colour one, are there the usual 4 yoke-in wires?
I'd like to have a crack at glorious techniwobble.