Haptic home theater?
Rayman
Posts: 13,906
I was recently very impressed by the bass watching Dune 2 at a Cinemark XD theater.
But, had the feeling that it wasn't entirely bass, but something shaking the seats.
Googled and read a bit and seems like that is a real thing.
Now, I'm wondering if I can implement something like that in my basement home theater.
Haptic can be relatively simple, just a motor and unbalanced load...
Would be neat if could make a couple things to shove under the couch legs downstairs and get the same feeling...
Comments
There is Chip's fft thing which might be useful for real time detection of low frequency sound...
A company called "Earthquake" were the first I saw make these. This was in the late 80's / early 90's and used for car audio. They used to have a sound processor and amplifier that went with them.
The Cinemark intro commercial made some points about how much better theater is to home. A lot of it is not true, but sound is definitely better at theater, at least than my setup…
A friend of mine is currently building a flight simulator with a motion platform. I think about adding such a "bass shaker" to make it feel more realistic. To simulate the motor vibrations is easy. It's just one base frequency depending on the RPM and maybe one or two harmonics depending on the cylinder configuration. But how would you generate low frequency noise? Like there is white, pink, brown and red noise for audio there should be different noise spectrums for simulating rolling on a grass, gravel or concrete runway.
Should have Googled... Seems you can already buy this:
https://thebuttkicker.com/products/buttkicker-wireless-couch-kit
I think buttkicker is also one of the ones used in some movie theaters...
This one has some specifications that I could use to build amp:
https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-BST-2-Tactile-Bass-Shaker-35-Watt-295-245?quantity=1
But I guess question is if really need MCU for this...