I may noise like I’m being over enthusiastic in this video. Je ne suis pas. everybody who has seen this believes it is just amazing.

My father, an ex navy man, has told me stories of radiant water since I was little.  Being a person who was consumed with all things that light up, this always stuck with me. I saw a headline someday that somebody was making an algae-light. unfortunately when I clicked on it, the algae was just there to produce oxygen. It was a awesome idea, however not what I was hoping for.

That slight frustration drove me to produce a night light utilizing radiant algae. The process might be extremely simple.

1. buy Algae.

2. set up light for algae (it needs a 12 hour light cycle as well as putting it in a window sill would kill it because of heat). It needs bulbs labelled 6500k or higher.

3. shake algae at night (it only lights up when agitated, as well as when it is on its “night” cycle).

I truly wished to add more to this job though, so I decided to put the algae in a klein bottle as well as develop a custom base for it that would enable me to move a BB around inside the bottle utilizing magnets. This would in turn, hopefully, agitate the algae as well as make it light up.

I developed the base with a DC motor in mind. I dropped it in as well as added power, however the spin was method as well quick as well as the BB wouldn’t “latch” onto a magnet. I was going to develop a little Hbridge to do PWM, however I didn’t have the stuff in my drawer-o-parts as well as didn’t want to make a trip to the store. So, I stuffed a servo in there instead. It worked, as well as I believed the BB going back as well as forth was a awesome bonus. You can download the data for the base here.

base

optional motor base

tous ensemble

To get a nice strong light, you have to shake the algae quite vigorously. I suspected the BB just wasn’t going to perturb them sufficient to truly shine. As a backup, I took one of my youngsters toys, a “tornado machine” that was basically a water tight tube with a spinning paddle at the bottom. I was right, the twister machine was much much brighter, however sprung a leak.

The part that is truly frustrating is that I just couldn’t catch the impact on video. It seemed bright to my eyes, as well as a long exposure picture shows it off relatively well, however none of my cameras would get video. I’ve seen videos of this stuff, so I was particularly annoyed.

Ultimately, I have moved it to a larger container next to my side of the bed as well as added some other miscellaneous algae. I tap on it as well as the result is like a small fireworks show in front of my eyes. It is so bizarre as well as beautiful.

Here’s a .gif I discovered of the effect. This isn’t my set up, however you can see what I’m speaking about here.