11 Attachment(s)
SCANPRO20K + DMX board from lasershowparts
Introduction
I first want to say that I just started with laser projectors as a hobby.
I was always fascinated by laser shows but I always thought that it was
out of reach for me. This review is written for anyone who is interested in
starting a laser show hobby, but hasn’t decided yet where to start and
what to buy. I am not a professional laserist, so this review is from a guy
who browsed laser forums for months and finally decided to start building
something.
All the pictures are as attachments. I also included the pdf version where
the pictures are embedded in the text.
The Order
At a certain point in time (April 24th), I noticed that Lasershowparts.com
presented a nice deal. A SCANPRO20K system and a DMX board for almost
half the price. This instantly made me grab my credit card. About 4 days
later, the package arrived.
Attachment 2561
Opening my present
Everything was packaged in bubble wrap, foam and anti static bags.
Important when you send stuff half around the world!
Here is a picture of all that was included:
Attachment 2562
From the upper left to the upper right: 2 Amplifiers, the DMX board,
the switched power supply and the galvo mounting block.
From the lower left to the right you see the manual, various DMX cables
and connectors, two galvos and galvo connection cables.
Attachment 2569
Attachment 2570
Attachment 2571
Attachment 2572
For persons who are also new at this, a DMX board is a small circuit board
that contains a variety of preprogrammed patterns. These patterns can be
selected and manipulated via a DMX protocol. If you don’t have a DMX
controller like me, then the circuit board can also “play” random patterns by
setting some dipswitches. There is a microphone included with the DMX
board tries to switch patterns on the beat of the music. A DMX board also
comes in handy for those who haven’t got a DAC and computer interface,
but still want to enjoy a laser show.
Lasershowparts claim that the galvo amplifiers are factory tuned to a higher
standard then their ECO series. I can’t wait to see my first galvos in action.
The blue potentiometers on the amplifiers are fixed with a little glue so you
can’t accidentally un-tune them.
Assembly
I connected everything according to the supplied manuals. The manual was
printed in color, so it is hard to make a mistake somewhere with the
different wire colors.
I do have to say that on the DMX board, the galvo wires that I had to
connect were not of the right male/female type. So while you can still
connect them, they do not ‘click’ together if you know what I mean.
Attachment 2563
The first time I put power on it all, I saw that all my images where upside
down. I didn’t want to risk any damage by switching + and – on the galvo
cables so I emailed Dave from lasershowparts.com. The same evening I
received a reply saying that there was a jumper pair that could be turned
90 degrees to invert the axis. It is nice to know that these Amps have this
capability. If you ever want to back project on a screen, you want to be
able to invert the x-axis.
I also found out that these scanners have a feedback output (2 pads next
to PR3 marked FD) that can be used by safety equipment to block the
beam if the galvo would fail for whatever reason.
The galvos have 6x12mm front coated mirrors on them, so with some
precise alignment, they can take a big fat red beam.
On the picture, you also see that I use a cheap 50mw green laser module
with TTL blanking for this review.
Showtime
I took some pictures of random patterns with a 1/20 shutter speed and
with the camera steady on the table. Notice that I use a cheap green
50mw laser that doesn’t blank very well. That is why you see dim retrace
lines sometimes.
Attachment 2567
Attachment 2566
This Chinese text (whatever it means) did not even flicker.
I noticed a little bit of flicker on this “Thank you” text. If I would take a
guess, the refresh rate was between 15 and 20 Hz. The real image is better
then this picture. The lines were not as thick, and the text was clearer.
You can also see my blanking problem in this picture (retrace lines between
the letters). I definitely need a new green laser!
Attachment 2564
The corners of the text were all nice and sharp. Now you know what they
mean when they say they are factory tuned to a high standard.
I calculated the scan angle for the largest pattern in the DMX board which
was a big square. With a projection distance of 1.3m, and a 1.0m width of
the square, the scan angle was 42degrees. This is not the maximum scan
angle of the galvos themselves. I assume that the mechanical limit is even
+50 degrees
The scanners ran for about 20 minutes during this whole test, and the
galvos and amplifiers where only a bit warmer then ambient temperature.
The DMX board had a very hot resistor. However, this was normal after
confirming with lasershowparts.
Conclusion
These are very good scanners for anyone who is interested in beam shows
and moderate graphics. The DMX board is good for standalone mode if you
don’t want to invest in a DAC and software.
These probably are one of the best scanners, price/quality wise that I have
found on the internet. They only need to update the manual about those
jumpers and feedback loop connections.
EDIT1: Dave updated the manuals the day after this review was posted. Nice one!
EDIT2: I found out how to put the picture throughout the text :rolleyes:
Scanpro20 DMX board problem
Hi,
Finally got around to powering up the scanners and DMX board.
All seems fine except:
It goes straight into what I assume is self test mode - displays a variety of shapes, numbers and messages.
It will do this with or without the ribbon with the dip switches on.
The LED is not powered up when plugged in.
Any suggestions? I'm dying to see what else it can do!
Regards,
David
just built a scanpro20/DMX laser show projector from the lasershow.com @ ebay
Well the kit works great but the PDF user errata and instructions are just down right horrifically vague. The seller contact Dave is nice, but it kind of sucks paying $60 for shipping from what I thought was Australia and receiving a drop ship from Shanghai, China, I Pray I never need the 1 year warranty replacement.
OK that said cons I had some issue with the small mirror area and its being 90% reflective had light beam left to right on ceiling vertically upward while projecting out horizontally and I found it very hard to adjust out that issue. This is wasted laser energy not being projected to intended target my fixed laser mount and in ability to skew horizontally and fine adjust deck height are probably contributing factors. The wiring requires some minor modifications (swapping leads in connector to DMX board) and allows room for mistakes that could toast non reverse protected galvo drive boards, and the connectors although pin spacing correct are not the same connector body style, which is a minor annoyance. These boards require additional heat sink area and without it are smoking hot.The setup galvo kit comes with a cute little compact 90-240vac switching supply. I was not able to use blanking signal to my single green laser to eliminate interletter trace in text, as when displaying the DMX board's pre-programmed animated patterns, I lost portions of demo patterns intended for other red blue color lasers,I wonder if I could somehow tie all 3 blanking inputs to drive for one laser ??? anyone out there with ideas on this please advise!!.If you have no familiarity with orientation of laser to galvo mirrors for a mono laser setup and or dichroic mirror configuration for a rgy 2 laser setup you will find your self lost or on learning curve as I was as there is ZERO info to this effect supplied with the kits. All that said I slapped this stuff together with a 60-80mw 532 mw green laser module and ran through the pre-programmed images and I was modestly impressed, but soon realized that to really do much of any original laser image design that a ILDA usb interface and basic starter software is going to start at just over $300 and up and anything really comprehensive is going to hit $700-$900 and way up from that at Pangolin ETC.. I am still pretty clueless on how to use the DMX512 interface that came with my setup it claims to have 14 DMX channels available and has a 10bit 512 address setup dip switch I am way out on learning curve on utilizing this interface as the sparse PDF manual is horrifically vauge in this area! My concern is that you might be able to buy a complete lasershow projector a basic one starting for what the seller wants for these boards at ebay but if you bid low and often they might be had for a fair price. If I knew what I know now I would have saved for a higher scan rate kit but I am still OK with outcome if these were locally distributed and about 25-30 percent cheaper due to local shipping it would be a good deal instead of just ok. I will add that I did not need to adjust the galvos and from what I gather this pretuning and serial number matching of galvos to drive boards is a good thing after reading up on galvo tuning this procedure can take 1-4 hours for the modestly initiated and the inept experimenter can mistune the 4 pots in seconds and render the boards never operable again and can even toast the galvos so if you build a laser show projector from scratch or upgrade yours make sure you do some serious research on tuning before touching these adjustments. its probably best to just leave them alone since they are pretuned.
P.S.
I Have a very dangerous start on a massive DPSS laser and am ironing details to make functional. I have just purchased some nice 12-14 od 532 1064 808 nanometer protective goggles, a 100 watt water cooled coherent 808nm laser module, a new transmission cooler for an auto, a 6 volt water pump, a wavelength temperature controller, need a side pumped yag rod and optics to collimate, have some laserscope lenses and mirrors a set of four for 1064nm, I am just about to receive a set of four(only need one want to sell some or all the others at $200 each) they are very expensive thermally conductively mounted aligned KTP crystals for a Clarion/coherent VPC medical laser and a KTP heater assembly. I am going to try to query a physics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who I cold called several weeks ago for a prospective design for as big a 532 nm dpss laser as I can pull off 5 watts would make me happy but I am hoping for 10-15 watts.
Any referrals to members with skill sets to put me in ball park or point in right direction on my project would be really cool of any of you. I am about 7-10 days away from receiving a low voltage 100amp linear power supply to drive my laser module with and then I will hopefully gather momentum on collimating laser on yag rod optics and cooling design of first stage and heating and optics design on doubling stage. All my regards from Frank :) Dreaming of day time viewable laser projector on low reflective backdrop of course.
:eek::eek::eek:Also I saw a 1 kilowatt h20 cooled 808nm laser this week on ebay starting at a grand it had ten 100watt bar lasers mounted in a water cooled assembly with an optical window. GEMMINY! You can't buy a gun on ebay but you can buy lasers that are REALLY DANGEROUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Neighbor pissses you off you can just collimate the thing and burn the tires off his car at a couple hundred feet with an invisible Infra Red Laser. Just Kidding lets keep the peace!:):D:):D:):D:):D:):D:):D:):D:):D:):D:):D
I was wondering how you are dealing with blanking issues in you rgy design
Did you refit an old projector or build from scratch I need a dichroic mirror and mount as you have pictured if you have a source for same, would kill baby rabbits for one as pictured.
my mono green laser from aziz looks exactly like yours with no blanking connected all the images appear all parts but as scanpro20 seems designed for rgb lasershow when my green blanking is connected my DMX board test patterns chinese text interletter tracing which connects letters disappears and is perfect and is correctly blanked but animations only show up green portions. seems like my only fix short of a firmware chip fix on dmx board is going to be to some how use a A or B or C non blanking logic circuit that would turn laser on when any of 3 laser is supposed to be on and would blank laser when all three laser blanked at same time, this obviously would not allow for any intensity variation which would make a really effective mono laser combining circuits design somewhat difficult to deal with intensity variations? anyone out there with solution would be a godsend!
Now your blanking issue I had no documents on my aziz chinese laser 532 module like yours I had same problem I looked at the lasers power supply PCB and I thought the outer edge blanking terminal was ground but it was actually the blanking signal and after reversing I achieved blanking as above. Simply test blanking of your laser by putting spare blue laser DMX pigtail on laser and touching two leads together laser should go on and off, unless blanking inverted somehow it should work unless dmx blanking drive is fried try another blanking color swap laser colors and see if it blanks for blue or red or hit on dave or ajiii for more ideas? best wishes Frank!:)
Cool thought a much more expensive item Thanks for wordup headed to walmart
Do you have a make model description so I can check their inventory by phone Thanks From Frank!!:)
P.S worse not candles but citronella smoke coils PU
Quote:
Originally Posted by
buffo
Citronella candles? Yuck!
Just go to walmart and buy a fog machine for $35. It will be more than enough for an indoor show. Fog machines are cheap.
Adam
Anyone using scanpro20 in a RGY seup please advise (BODY)
how your test preprogrammed DMX driven images are displaying without a blue component, and whether you have any yellow component in these images . Thanks a million I know XNTRIX would love to answer after resolving blanking issue.
SCANPRO20K "offset" pot ?
Hello, I have a set SCANPRO20K of galvos and amps boards. I would like to know what is the "position offset" (PR5) trimmer ? (Yep, I know the document says "don't touch it") I've tried to tune the boards and touched PR5 accidentally. Seem to have almost no visible effect and i don't like to not know what something is for ;) Someone has an idea ? Or - better - the schematic of a board ? Thanks by advance, cLx
