When your ESP32 just wants to draw pretty pictures in salt.

A maker known as CrazyScience has revived a 1787 physics experiment—the Chladni plate—by building a modern version with an ESP32 microcontroller, a speaker, and a sprinkle of salt. Instead of a violin bow raking a metal plate, this device uses a speaker to vibrate the plate, causing the salt to form intricate patterns based on the sound's resonant frequencies. It features a rotary encoder for tuning, an OLED display to show the frequency, and a 3D-printed enclosure that looks suspiciously slick.

For engineers, this is a charmingly pointless weekend project that beautifully demonstrates standing wave physics with off-the-shelf parts. There’s no practical application mentioned, and frankly, its main job is to look cool on a desk. The real takeaway? Sometimes the best tech projects are the ones that trade utility for pure, mesmerizing spectacle.