Colin told me about laser microphones, and the idea tickled me in a way that most times I’m tickled like that, I have to cuddle afterwards.

At any rate, I happened upon a metacafe video of how to make one yourself. I skipped down to Radioshack and bought the photoresistor and a cheap laser pointer.

I had some troubles getting any signal off of it at first, but I decided to try to set it up like I thought it should work and try the whole shebang without trying to get each piece to work. I was able to pick up taps on the glass (though they had to be amplified a great deal, giving me a surprisingly clear signal), but I was unable to record any voices. I expect this just has to do with the intensity and spread of the laser, and I imagine that a higher quality laser might be able to pick up speech. If I ever get one of the nice Think Geek laser pointers, I’ll certainly have to try it again. I wonder what my neighbors have to say.