Small musical fountain

Small musical fountain, can it be done?

The question

Often we get asked can we supply the parts and know how to make a small musical fountain, we always say no because there are no small speed variable pumps, no small bright water proof lights, and the control software is expensive etc.

We still standby that, however we have seen a small "musical fountain" built by students, below is a picture of it working.

The errors

First of all, Its not a fountain. The water comes from the top down, a fountain the water goes from the bottom upwards falling back down, this is a waterfall. (There is a reason why they did it this way)

Where are the pumps? There are none, (We did say there are no small speed variable pumps)  The water supply  is connected directly to the mains tap (Look at the white pipe centre of the picture) It uses small electric valves to release the water. They could not get a small pump that would be powerful and small enough.

What's the box on the top for? That holds the valves, its to stop them from getting wet, the valves used are not for use underwater, they came as a "job lot" from an auction website*. Fast acting valves will quite often soon wear out.

Lights

Why are there no lights? The students did try LED'S run from the same controller, but they soon found out that by using valves, the valves are considerably slower than what LED's are.*

Controls

So what controls the valves? The students made their own "sound sampler" which as the name suggests, samples the sound and allocates a specific frequency to a specific valve, so instead of like a normal musical fountain  where the water changes height in accordance with the music this one just releases a squirt of water into the sink. (Remember its the mains water pressure from the tap)

The students conclusion

Overall, this project turned out to be much more challenging and time consuming than we originally planned*

Our conclusion.

As we first said, its not a fountain, it can never be a fountain. There are no nozzles to direct the water, (The video does show the water going at different angles because it has no nozzles) the valves need  high water pressure to open, a large pump would wear out after a short while. As the valves came  from an auction site*, that means they will not get anymore, and neither will you. You also have to make your own sound sampler, as they did. In the musical fountains we supply all the software for you. The students did learn a lot building their "fountain" They learnt, its no where near as easy as they first thought it would be, and the parts are not what they were expecting to use*.   It was made in 2006. We admire them for what they have done, but its not really a musical fountain is it.

* Taken from the text the students wrote