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Thread: The LaserBoy Thread

  1. #91
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
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    Akron, Ohio USA
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    Wow! A version of MS Windows 10 will be available for the Raspberry Pi 2!

    That's a very big deal!

    James.
    Creator of LaserBoy!
    LaserBoy is free and runs in Windows, MacOS and Linux (including Raspberry Pi!).
    Download LaserBoy!
    YouTube Tutorials
    Ask me about my LaserBoy Correction Amp Kit for sale!
    All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.

  2. #92
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
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    768

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    Well, you know the drill...

    Quote Originally Posted by dzodzo View Post
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10...years_of_code/ - in your face WinXP

    also a distant resemblance of something that's already been...

    Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Fuhrer.

  3. #93
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
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    Akron, Ohio USA
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    A new new new newer version of LB is available!

    http://laserboy.org/code/LaserBoy_2015_02_23.zip

    I added a couple of new features and several new settings.

    LB now does proximity based curve fitting (of a sort).

    If you go into menu [Tab] system value settings, you can set option 2 insignificant distance. The default is 60.

    This value has always been there for wave import normalization, but now it serves as a parameter for minimizing the loaded frame set.

    If you look in menu h frame transforms, you'll see some new functions have been added and the key values are slightly different.

    Option f fit to insignificant distance is the function itself. You can apply it to the art directly with the f key, and it is also included in the minimization process.

    I have found that insignificant distance (in the [Tab] menu) can be set as high as option 3 max optimized lit vector in points with very nice results, depending on the art you apply it to.

    For example, I can set option c rendered arc angle in degrees to something very small like 0.2 and then go into menu m render segments by coordinates and draw some really nice curvy math figures. The rendered arc angle determines how the curve is quantized into individual vertices. The smaller the arc step the more points there will be.

    Then I can go into menu h and hit k to minimize and the points along the curve are reduced in number but the curve is still nicely fitted.

    Be aware that using a high number for insignificant distance can really wreck art with a lot of small details.

    Another function I just added is called conglomerate segments. It looks at all the lit segments in a frame to see of any of the ends meet. If so it glues those segments together into one continuous lit segment. If there are multiple segment ends that match, it looks at all of them and chooses the one that requires the least change in direction.

    I have found that DXF imports can be all broken up into individual vectors in the wrong order, even though you might have drawn the image using POLYLINE.

    This function will fix that.

    It can be a very time consuming function when there are a lot of individual lit segments. The number of calculations it takes is exponentially related to how many items it has to sort.

    In menu x system switch settings there are two new settings; 8 conglomerate in minimize and 9 fracture conglomerate. The first one tells LB whether it should use this function during minimization or not. The second one tells LB if it should fracture all of the segments into individual lit vectors before sorting them out and conglomerating them.

    One other feature I added is in the u user interface visuals menu. Now you can choose to have the menu font with an opaque background. This makes it easier to read over a lot of detailed vector art.

    James.
    Creator of LaserBoy!
    LaserBoy is free and runs in Windows, MacOS and Linux (including Raspberry Pi!).
    Download LaserBoy!
    YouTube Tutorials
    Ask me about my LaserBoy Correction Amp Kit for sale!
    All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.

  4. #94
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Location
    Akron, Ohio USA
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    Also, to anyone out there who had one of those Chinese projectors with the SD card reader, I added a new frame set effect called chil.

    If you open some frames in LB you can hit o to output, 1 for ild, 5 for frame set effect and type chil.

    This will produce a new ild file called chil.ild in the ild folder.

    The effect makes sure the art uses the Default palette of 63 colors and makes sure it gets saved as ILDA format 0 (3D). It also adds extra points at the beginning and end of every lit segment and at every transition from one color to another.

    You should optimize your art before applying this effect and make sure that option c in menu x is off before you do! Otherwise your art will be automatically minimized when you save (optimizations will be stripped out).

    Please let me know if this works!

    I don't have one of those SD card readers, so I cannot test it.

    James.
    Creator of LaserBoy!
    LaserBoy is free and runs in Windows, MacOS and Linux (including Raspberry Pi!).
    Download LaserBoy!
    YouTube Tutorials
    Ask me about my LaserBoy Correction Amp Kit for sale!
    All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.

  5. #95
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Location
    Akron, Ohio USA
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    WOW! I finally got my Raspberry Pi model 2 up and running!

    I tried the latest Raspbian distro, but I could not get it to work even though it said it should work on the Pi 2.

    Anyway... I got the NOOBS distro and installed Rasbian that way and it works great!

    I added joe text editor and GCC with g++ and libSDL and Boost C++, plus the samba Windows workgroup file system sharing stuff.

    So now I can drag and drop the LaserBoy folder onto the Pi 2 file system and compile the whole thing.

    On the original Pi, it takes over 28 minutes to compile LB.

    On the Pi 2 it takes just over 8 minutes!

    And it's pretty zippy when it runs it as well!

    So now I have a readily available hardware platform that is fixed, known and stable to develop other stuff on.

    My ezfb frame buffer API also works very well on the latest distribution of Raspbian!

    I can log in to a command prompt and run LB and it fills the whole screen from the console; no X required!

    Plus it still runs in X!

    Next I plan to plug my LB DAC into it and see if that works. It used to work in the old distribution of Raspbian on the old Pi, so I have great expectations for the new version on the Pi 2.

    Soon I will have a complete LaserBoy Workstation, networkable, that is about the size of a credit card that can mount a USB hard drive for huge storage and the whole thing runs off of +5VDC and will easily fit inside of a laser projector case!

    Ever think about plugging a keyboard, monitor and Ethernet into your laser projector?

    OK, a mouse too...

    I can't believe that a fully functional computer with all the bells an whistles is about $35 + a $25 32GB microSD card!

    Super cool!

    James.
    Last edited by james; 02-25-2015 at 14:57.
    Creator of LaserBoy!
    LaserBoy is free and runs in Windows, MacOS and Linux (including Raspberry Pi!).
    Download LaserBoy!
    YouTube Tutorials
    Ask me about my LaserBoy Correction Amp Kit for sale!
    All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.

  6. #96
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
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    Akron, Ohio USA
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    Update:

    Got the CM6206 USB sound chip working on the RPi-2!

    At the moment my LaserBoy DAC is hooked up to an O-scope.

    I can shell into the Pi and play multi-channel waves from the command prompt.

    With a little bit of development, it should be pretty straight forward to turn this thing into a very intelligent network DAC.

    James.
    Creator of LaserBoy!
    LaserBoy is free and runs in Windows, MacOS and Linux (including Raspberry Pi!).
    Download LaserBoy!
    YouTube Tutorials
    Ask me about my LaserBoy Correction Amp Kit for sale!
    All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.

  7. #97
    Join Date
    Dec 2013
    Location
    Traverse City MI
    Posts
    3

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    I will be trying this today.

  8. #98
    Join Date
    Jul 2015
    Posts
    28

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    For people experiencing problems with built-in SD-Card readers:

    copy .ild file into ild subfolder of LaserBoy (for example test.ild)
    - open LaserBoy
    - press i for input then 1 to select ild file.
    - type filename for example test then it shows up in the bottom of the program.
    - press enter then 1 toad it into program.
    - press o to output then 1 to select .ild format
    - press 5 to apply effect to change .ild format
    - type chil to select the chil-effect (presumably most compatible with V0 .ild
    - the resulting chil.ild should now be compatible with your SD-Card reader.

  9. #99
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    Akron, Ohio USA
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    The chil effect was written specifically for the SD card readers that seem to only be able to read Format 0 with colors from the Default palette of 63 colors.

    So, it promotes all 2D frames to 3D (leaves 3D frames intact) and does a best color match to the Default palette.

    It also adds a copy of every point that is a transition between lit to blank, blank to lit or from one color to another.

    I'm not sure it if fixes all the problems. I can't test it. I don't have an SD card reader.

    I think the bug in some of these readers is that they read the color and blanking information from the wrong end of every vector.

    It is supposed to be read from the destination end, not the anchor.

    If anyone out there would like to test this and report, it would be greatly appreciated.

    James.
    Creator of LaserBoy!
    LaserBoy is free and runs in Windows, MacOS and Linux (including Raspberry Pi!).
    Download LaserBoy!
    YouTube Tutorials
    Ask me about my LaserBoy Correction Amp Kit for sale!
    All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.

  10. #100
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Location
    Akron, Ohio USA
    Posts
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    Default ADAT transcription challenge

    There has been some chatter about using LaserBoy to read and transcribe wave files into anything usable as laser vector art.

    So let's get it out there and test and possibly fix it.

    I'm looking for someone else to provide a recording of anything from a laser DAC.

    Put it up for my inspection and let me see what I can get from it.

    In the process we might all learn something.

    Please post your questions and test data to this thread.

    Perhaps out of this we can all see how to convert ADAT transcriptions to something we all understand.

    James.
    Creator of LaserBoy!
    LaserBoy is free and runs in Windows, MacOS and Linux (including Raspberry Pi!).
    Download LaserBoy!
    YouTube Tutorials
    Ask me about my LaserBoy Correction Amp Kit for sale!
    All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.

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