A device that creates the effect of slow motion.

[DaneR]

The 'slow dance', check it out here

is a device that creates an effect of movement in slow motion. I want to attempt to make something similar as a fun home project. I can see it uses an electromagnet to vibrate whatever is attached to a clip and strobing led strip lights illuminate a pattern in the movement, creating the effect. I'm new to electronics and just looking for advice on how to begin. In the video from 1.15 onward there are some basic diagrams and prototypes.

I know I would need led strip lights that can strobe at around 80 times a second, would i need some kind of circuit board to control that? Am i out of my depth here? Is something like this possible for a newbie to figure out? Any help much appreciated.

 

[BobK]

Interesting effect.

I believe it works like this:

You vibrate something at a given frequency, let's say 100 Hz, i.e. 10ms period.

The you strobe it at say an 11ms period. Each strobe then has shown it advanced 1/10 of an period, so it looks like motion at 1/11 the speed.

Bob

 

[shrtrnd]

This is probably not going to help with the project you're trying to do, but your description brought back
memories of my kids using a flashing strobe light in darkness. The little box that was available from a lot
of places (like Spencer's) was about $15. It was just a high voltage circuit and a common Xenon tube strobe.
It had a variable speed pot. The visual effects in total darkness with anything the kids did in moving around or
moving objects was pretty impressive (to me anyway).
Not as exotic as your video, but something I thought I'd bring up in case you wanted to consider something along
those lines in your experimentations.
As BobK noted, the strobe effect is the key here. Maybe the video speed/strobe of the video camera(?)
Anyway it's an optical trick of what your eyes/mind sees, and how it processes that information.

 

[garublador]

That same technique is commonly done with water, too. There are a ton of articles on the internet on to do it. Here's a couple:

http://www.electroboom.com/?p=268

http://people.cornellcollege.edu/dsherman/waterdrops.html