In an effort to combine social media with art, Matt Richardson has built a laser gun that shoots out tweets, which we guess based on the photo above could be interpreted as art (it is subjective after all). The “laser gun” is a combination of Twitter feeds taken across the web, an Arduino microcontroller, an ultra-violet laser diode and glow-in-the dark surfaces.The project has been dubbed “Fade Away 1“, and according to Richardson, a PHP server searches for specific tweets, and in this case it searches for the term “fade away”. It then feeds the data to two high resolution digital servos that control the ultra-violet laser diode, and through the Arduino microcontroller, it “prints” pre-programmed characters onto the phosphorescent vinyl panel.
There’s still a lot of work left to be done, for example Richardson is aiming to make the letters look nicer, more square and also make it a little more quieter. Sounds pretty cool and it looks pretty cool too. You can check out the video below for Matt Richardson’s explanation and a demonstration of his Twitter laser gun in action.
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