Introducing LWave

Awhile back, I wrote an abstract function generator program called LaserWave (before I knew there was a manufacturer of the same name). I've since dressed it up a bit and renamed it LWave.

LWave produces 6 or 8 channel .wav files that can be played on a projector using a modified audio card and correction amp. The first 6 channels contain laser data (X,Y,R,G,B,user-defined), and ch 7&8 can be used for music. Even if you don't have a projector or a multi-ch audio card, you can still run LWave in the stereo demo mode- just slip on a pair of headphones and enjoy the show on your screen.

I'm an audio electronics type that has played around with soundcards for a long time, and I believe soundcards are a cheap but worthwhile alternative to push the envelope of laser projection to include photographic color rendering, together with optional music or enjoyable sound effects in one package, for those who don't mind doing a little tinkering.

I know you! *retardo

I've heard of lwave from James Lehmann.. Sounds very cool! Downloading now..

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Originally Posted by Lazerjock

I know you! *retardo

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Dean was at SELEM 2009. He was also at SELEM 2008, but you missed that one...

Glad to see you're still working on this project, Dean. It really is capable of creating some awesome abstracts!

Adam

Thanks for the reply, Adam!

Big thumbs-up dean, while it's not the most intuitive program to use it's the bees knees in free abstract generators.
"I'd like to buy another oscillator, please.." ;)

Hi Dchammonds,
Pleasure to meeting you here, it is pleasure to know people love the same name" Laserwave".
good job,big thumbs for your working.
Bridge is representation of laserwave here, wish to be friends with you.
Best ragards!
Bridge

Been having a lot of fun this LWave Dean, nice work.

This inspired me to think about what kind of software I could write that maybe hasn't been done before. I've been thinking it might be fun to do something with edge detection on video. It could be real time with a fast enough PC or with DirectX10 hardware.

Mike

Sweet!
I'll have to check this out. Thanks Dean!

Thanks for all of the positive feedback! I'm so excited about the fact that you can buy a multi-ch USB audio DAC for about $20 together with a simple correction circuit and make a hi-end color laser projector do a dance! One of my goals is to inspire some programmers to consider using wav file format (together with some simple formatting) as a way to present and archive a canned laser show.

"Programmers are devious bastards who should be watched carefully at all times and kept in dark rooms with no televisions or computers and fed horse doodoo like mushrooms." - mixedgas

Can't argue with that...

New version!!!

This rev includes built-in multi-channel wave playback, and other benefits. Now, at least some of the bubble gum and bailing wire has been removed, since an external wave player application is no longer required.

http://akrobiz.com/laserboy/forum/in...343.0;msg=5124

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Originally Posted by dchammonds

New version!!!

This rev includes built-in multi-channel wave playback, and other benefits. Now, at least some of the bubble gum and bailing wire has been removed, since an external wave player application is no longer required.

http://akrobiz.com/laserboy/forum/in...343.0;msg=5124

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Cool, good job!

Is the built in wave function gonna get transfered to Laserboy for Windblow$, or am I dreaming?

Steve

New version!

I've added a couple extra features, one of which was inspired by an interesting EasyLase abstract generator app written by Serveurperso (Thanks!).

http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php?...sg5253#msg5253

Hey Dean!
Thanks for the credit in your introduction on my board. I'm flattered. :cool: The thanks goes to you for such a simple yet effective circuit that MANY have used for a DYI controller.
You Rock!
Adam

New Version!!!

This rev has ILDA file output options and some experimental music-based beam show support!!!

http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php/...1.html#msg5471

Hey Man,
I tried your program for the first time yesterday- it's really cool! Thanks for sharing it. I enjoyed listening to the audio and watching the patterns at the same time- freaky fun :)
-Mike

I tried it under Windows 7 64-bit but i get error:

Run-time error '13':

Type mismatch

and then the program crashes, i suppose it's designed for Windows XP?

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Originally Posted by dzodzo

I tried it under Windows 7 64-bit but i get error:

Run-time error '13':

Type mismatch

and then the program crashes, i suppose it's designed for Windows XP?

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I actually compiled the app on a 7_64 laptop (it was upgraded from Vista64, though).

Does it crash right away when you first start?

The program starts, i can see the workspace but before i'm able to do anything a popup window with the error message appears and when i click it, the program crashes (or exits, don't know =)

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Originally Posted by dzodzo

The program starts, i can see the workspace but before i'm able to do anything a popup window with the error message appears and when i click it, the program crashes (or exits, don't know =)

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Try an uninstall then reinstall to someplace other than the Program Files directory.

Do you have another computer that you could try it on?

so i tried the program on notebook (another computer) running win7 64-bit but i got the same error, so i tried to run it in VirtualBox with win xp as guest os and that works without a problem, so that's sufficient for me :)

LWave was originally written to make exclusive use of modified audio cards by generating multi-channel wave files and playing them back as audio data. Modified soundcards do have their own headaches and they are not for everyone,so I've attempted to add support for the EasyLase and RIYA DACs in this new test version. When using either of these devices, it's not necessary to set LWave to generate multi-ch waves, as the data is passed directly to the automatically detected card when the plot sequence is started, and stereo sound is routed to the default audio device.

Since I don't own either of these DACs, this version is NOT tested... If anyone who has one of these devices and wants to try out an oddball abstract generator, here it is:

Look for LW_01_11_Test.zip at http://laserboy.org/lwave/

Dean

I forgot to include an important file in the LW test version so that is now fixed.:o If you have the older version of LWave installed, you already have the missing file.

http://laserboy.org/lwave/


Dean

This release of LWave adds a couple new audioscope plots based on imported music files. Most important, it now uses Madplay (a freeware mp3 decoder) to create plots from mp3
music files (thanks drlava!). Previously, LWave was limited to wave file imports exclusively.

I probably should have dealt with this long ago, but better late than never... Who else but me would make a habit of carrying hundreds of GB's of uncompressed wave audio from CD's on their HD?


Dean
Attachment 25766

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Originally Posted by dchammonds

Who else but me would make a habit of carrying hundreds of GB's of uncompressed wave audio from CD's on their HD? Dean Attachment 25766

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Anyone with acute hearing perhaps! (Have you ever tried listening to flamenco in MP3) LOL :D

Cheers :)

Digging up an ancient thread...

A couple years back I blew the dust off of LWave and made an updated version, but never got around to posting it... Oops!:rolleyes:

I checked out the PL ftp site recently and I was amazed at the amount of excellent ILDA file content, so I decided to dig out an ILD to WAV app that I wrote long ago and
cobble it into LWave so that I could easily view the files from there. This version of LWave also allows easy conversion of an entire set of frames to bitmap with just a
few clicks. Yeah, I know- all we need is yet another ILDA viewer (but this one will allow you to hear the XY signal as you watch:rolleyes:).

This attachment is just the updated LWave.exe file; you still need to run the full install from the previous version (if you have not already done so) in order to use it.

I have a few comments on LWave since I do use it regularly.

I would love to see loopable output, in other words it would be nice if the abstract completed a cycle and ended up where it started.

The interface is a little all over the place. The easy fix here would be to use some grouping boxes to put things in logical groups. For instance a group for "Output" a group for "Settings" whatever. I have read through the doc and think that grouping selections could make the interface a little more friendly.

The output bitmap settings dont need to pop up every time

Once I start a plot in the plot window, there is no way to stop it.

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Originally Posted by keeperx

Once I start a plot in the plot window, there is no way to stop it.

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The Plot Space must have focus then press spacebar. You can also pause by pressing P then you can move forward or backward a frame at a time using the LR arrows and press P again to resume- makes it easy to find a frame to send to bmp. Thanks for the feedback!

Welcome back!

Updated EXE.

Addressed safety issue where beam stays on unintentionally with some soundcard drivers, plus a minor bug fix to a problem that can happen when selecting a source file.

Have you given any though to making the plots loopable?

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Originally Posted by keeperx

Have you given any though to making the plots loopable?

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What he means is can you make a set of functions that are truly periodic over time. In other words the last frame looks like the first.

I think the word loopable gets that point across.

Loop - a structure, series, or process the end of which is connected to the beginning.
-able - a suffix meaning “capable of, susceptible of, fit for, tending to, given to,”

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Originally Posted by keeperx

Have you given any though to making the plots loopable?

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I'll try fudging the axis rotational frequencies tonight - make them harmonic or something. Are there any specific plots you're interested in?

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Originally Posted by keeperx

Have you given any though to making the plots loopable?

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OK, I made an LWave hack that only affects Plot 4001 so that it repeats every 20 sec, let me know what you think.

Attachment 54885

That is perfect. I have tested this for my use case and its exactly what I (and I bet others) are looking for. I would LOVE to see a bunch of them have that option. I feel like that makes the output of LWave more useful to integrate into actual shows.

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Originally Posted by keeperx

That is perfect. I have tested this for my use case and its exactly what I (and I bet others) are looking for. I would LOVE to see a bunch of them have that option. I feel like that makes the output of LWave more useful to integrate into actual shows.

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I'm thinking about adding user specified axis rotational rates for all 3D plots so you can make them cycle out at any time frame or not at all. My original intent long ago was to hard code the rates so that plots would never quite cycle out over time. Gonna take a bit of code editing...:cool:

Updated EXE

Added user specified axis rotational rates for all 3D plots so you can make them cycle out in a predictable time frame or not at all, plus a couple minor additions.

Updated EXE


Added a new ILD file output option called SD to save ILD files in a format that is best suited for SD card projectors with TTL color.
Added a Play Music Selection to allow playback of a separate stereo track when playing back 6 channel waves or ILD files. Playback of the music
selection can be routed to another audio device if a modified sound card is in use for the projector. A couple other tweaks are also included.

Updated EXE

Utilized a codec to broaden the range of stereo file types that can be read into LWave.

Corrected unforseen issues with some plots that occured as a result of adding adjustable rotational rates for X Y Z.

Dean,

So i am back to messing with LWave and cant seem to figure out how to create plots that cycle properly. Could you explain?

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Originally Posted by keeperx

Dean,

So i am back to messing with LWave and cant seem to figure out how to create plots that cycle properly. Could you explain?

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Are there specific plots that you are having trouble with?

Only plots that employ rotation are loopable for now. Color schemes do not loop, so you may see a large color change at the rollover point.

The default rotation rates are in hundredths of revs/sec, so the overall cycle time should be no more than 100sec. Many plots are symmetrical and can
cycle out in half the expected time as a result.

It would be incredibly useful if there was a way to just check a box that would force the output to be one complete cycle. I understand that the color cycle is not resolved yet but in this use case the easiest thing to do would just be too always output one complete cycle. That means that the resulting ilda file or wave could be Loop forever. Having these types of plots loopable is really nice because it means you can leave them up for extended periods of time without worrying about odd behavior.

This version of LWave now includes support for the Helios DAC in addition to RIYA, EasyLase, and modified soundcard DACs.
Thanks to Grix for all the tech support!


If you already have LWave installed, download the update, otherwise download the full release- it contains
all of the support files so there's no need to run an installation app.

Hi, I wanted to try LWave, but it doesn't start with an error: [ Run-time error '13':Type mismatch ] how do I fix it? Windows 7 PRO x64 is installed. Thank you.

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Originally Posted by electrobitstorm

Hi, I wanted to try LWave, but it doesn't start with an error: [ Run-time error '13':Type mismatch ] how do I fix it? Windows 7 PRO x64 is installed. Thank you.

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Try this updated version.

Run-time error '13' With the latest update on Win10 64bit. I'd love to try it...

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Originally Posted by torolav

Run-time error '13' With the latest update on Win10 64bit. I'd love to try it...

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Copy the LWave folder to the root directory of a USB drive and try running it from there.

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Originally Posted by dchammonds

Copy the LWave folder to the root directory of a USB drive and try running it from there.

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Copied to USB drive, still the same...

Attachment 60854

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Originally Posted by torolav

Copied to USB drive, still the same...

Attachment 60854

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Do you know how to set the compatibility mode for an app in Windows?