LaserCam: A brand new live webcam to laser projection application

[drlava]

Hi John, are your CPU cores at 100%? Is the camera display window operating at a low frame rate? You can turn the detail slider down to relieve some of the load for your CPU. The movie in the original post was taken with a 4GHz i7 machine with about 30% cpu core load on 2 cores.

[santanas]

Hi Doc, and thanks for the heads up. I am still working on the live part. I will play with the controles and see if I can adjust the speeds. I am not as refined on computers as some to adjustments and alotments. But I do know the tecks here at the VA Hospital where I work at. Thanks again for the info. John H

[drlava]

Sent out an email to users for update 1.0.6 with new features, improvements, etc.. Enjoy and thanks for your feedback!

[Dr Laser]

Andrew this is awesome.

[ckilgore1]

Glad youall are liking it! It's certainly fun to use and amazing see yourself and others in laser. Right now LaserCam technology is all about live video, no avi file loading option; however I've tried pointing the camera at videos playing on the monitor and even the tv and the results are suprisingly good. So you could always do that.

Also, if you have the need (such as FB3-only owners) you can run this without any DAC and use the Record to ILDA File feature, then load those files into your playback soft.

Am I understanding correctly that the "Record to ILDA File" is a feature of this software. If so it seems that once the video is captured by this software, it has the potential to play through most any playback software? Is it relatively user friendly? The price seems almost too good to be true.

[drlava]

Am I understanding correctly that the "Record to ILDA File" is a feature of this software. If so it seems that once the video is captured by this software, it has the potential to play through most any playback software? Is it relatively user friendly? The price seems almost too good to be true.

That is correct. LaserCam can record to ILDA files so that any laser show software can use and integrate them. As far as laser software goes, I'd consider LaserCam user friendly, yes. Support is there, too. Any operation questions you might have once you get into it I can answer over PM or the phone.

[buffo]

Any operation questions you might have once you get into it I can answer over PM or the phone.

I'll vouch for this personally. Andrew has no problems walking people through the use of his software. If you're having problems, give him a call! He'll get you up and running.

I've played around with LaserCam a good bit, and I have to admit that it has a lot of potential, especially for people who don't have any other alternative for real-time video tracing. At only $50 for the intro version, it's money well spent in my book!

One thing though: It really does need a dual-core processor to run correctly. Thus far I've been unable to test it under full load, because the only dual-core machine I have does not have a free PCI slot for my QM-2000 controller.

However, even on a single-core machine, you can still save frames to ILDA in real-time and then play them back later. So it's still usable as a frame-creation tool even if you've only got a single-core CPU. With a little creativity, some dark clothing, and a white sheet hanging behind you, I think it would be fairly easy to create lots of custom laser show content. (Now if only I had the time....)

Adam

[drlava]

Hi, thanks Adam. There is a new 1.0.8 update that reduces the CPU load while displaying live frames with your projector, along with a few other bugfixes and enhancements.

[buffo]

Cool - I'll have to give that a shot this weekend.

Thanks for continuing to develop this, Andrew!

Adam

[loopee]

Here’s another use for LaserCam


Quick and easy logo tracer, save the frame then edit it to remove the unwanted stuff around the logo

The example below it from a pack of batteries



Drlava, could be a worthwhile adding a one shot capture button to save a single frame to file.

BTW, if anyone is looking for an exceptional web-cam, the Microsoft Lifecam Cinema HD is brilliant with really good low light capabilities.


This one



Troy


PS. drlava, great work on the software