Someone jammed Death Stranding's goop into a Bluetooth speaker and made it dance

YouTube YouTube
Watch On

Put simply, this Bluetooth speaker moves in response to music, but it's much more than just that. It's a groovy space-age dream of musical visualisation—the lava lamp of the future, today and is the brainchild of Hackaday maker Dakd Jung.

The project involves reprocessing the magnetically attracted, dancing ferrofluid used inside the speaker to give it more of that smooth lava lamp aesthetic. Because ferrofluid has a habit of sticking to glass surfaces, treatment of the water was necessary to remove the spiky look you apparently often get when playing with ferrofluid and magnets. 

There's no note on the exact treatment used, but generally speaking the addition of isopropyl alcohol to the liquid should create the desired effect. 

Sitting comfortably?

(Image credit: Secretlab)

Best chair for gaming: the top gaming chairs around
Best gaming desk: the ultimate PC podiums
Best PC controller: sit back, relax, and get your game on

The mechanism itself is operated via dials on the front of the case, which edit the behaviour of the ferrofluid using an electromagnetic device. Aside from the ferrofluid concoction, and fully 3D printed housing designed by Jung himself, an 'MSGEQ7' graphic equaliser display module was employed, along with a passive radiator, and two upward-facing speakers to complete the project. 

But you don't care about that... look at the dancing liquid, man.

Though if you are interested as to how the ferrofluid speaker performs when faced with different kinds of music, here's a link to the Instagram page where Jung has posted some further sound tests. 

As always, keep on making!

Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Having been obsessed with game mechanics, computers and graphics for three decades, Katie took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni and has been writing about digital games, tabletop games and gaming technology for over five years since. She can be found facilitating board game design workshops and optimising everything in her path.