Raspberry Pi

[Stoney3K]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi



http://www.raspberrypi.org/

This could be a very interesting base board for new DAC development projects.

The Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Scheduled for public release in January 2012, the foundation plans to release two versions that range from US$25 to $35 (GBP £16 to £22). It is intended to stimulate the teaching of basic computer science in schools.

The design includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz processor, 128 or 256 megabytes (MiB) of memory, intended to run Linux or RISC OS.[2][3] The design does not include a built-in hard disk or solid-state drive, instead relying on an SD card for long-term storage.

The Model B board has onboard Ethernet and both boards are powered off standard 5V. Dropping one of these into a projector and doing cool stuff would be a definite snap.

I2C and SPI buses are available for connection to DAC chips (such as the Microchip 4922), but using USB, it could be dead simple to "Ethernetize" existing sound card DACs.

[dilbert]

He he he I've already got my eye on one of these in Jan when they are released for a different network project...

[steve-o]

That looks pretty nice. I used an old "basic-stamp" for a show or 2 a while back .

[DTR]

I am very excited about these. I hear the XBMC devs are going to do a port for it which will be sweet. Here is a video that showed up the other day showing off the 1080P playback.

[chad]

Those are really neat!! I will have to get one of those to add to my collection of things that I can't program!

You could make a daughter board for it with dacs and buffers and all of the stuff you need for it, then write a bunch of software or you could just buy one of these.

http://ether-dream.com/

Not as cheap but he isn't making 25000 of them, the price will come down with volume. These are already built to do laser specifically. They have a 100mhz 32bit ARM, dacs, safety interlock,SD, Ethernet.

More importantally, firmware that is working and an interface through ethernet to a robust and getting better, pc laser software, LSX. The hardware is the easy part. The tool chainn is free, the code is open source.

I am all for reinventing the wheel, but that processor and the linux overhead are way overkill for streaming points to galvos, in my opinion.

anyway, neat little board!

chad

[Stoney3K]

Those are really neat!! I will have to get one of those to add to my collection of things that I can't program!

You could make a daughter board for it with dacs and buffers and all of the stuff you need for it, then write a bunch of software or you could just buy one of these.

http://ether-dream.com/

Not as cheap but he isn't making 25000 of them, the price will come down with volume. These are already built to do laser specifically. They have a 100mhz 32bit ARM, dacs, safety interlock,SD, Ethernet.

More importantally, firmware that is working and an interface through ethernet to a robust and getting better, pc laser software, LSX. The hardware is the easy part. The tool chainn is free, the code is open source.

I am all for reinventing the wheel, but that processor and the linux overhead are way overkill for streaming points to galvos, in my opinion.

anyway, neat little board!

chad

The Etherdream is a good board for people who want to get started with a ready made DAC right away. The Etherdream is powerful enough for most applications, but it may lack the processing power for 'really cool stuff', and with that I mean stuff that you could only do on a board like the Lasergraph DSP.

With a 700MHz CPU at your disposal you can even run your laser display software on the projector, and have only a remote terminal at your front-of-house, eliminating risk of failure because the image data does not have to be streamed real time to multiple targets. Also, with a fully fledged CPU, you can do procedural dynamic frames, real-time 3D rendering to vector graphics and software synthesis on your projector, which would make for some really fluent and beautiful images in the future, not limited to sets of 'frames' being streamed one after another. For example, the OpenLase API, which is already developed for Linux, uses an OpenGL-like graphics library to generate graphics on the fly, and supports USB sound cards out of the box.

Just for streaming points to galvos, it may be a bit overkill (but still cheaper than a RIYA Multibus or an Ether Dream!), but for moving more intelligence into the projector and to make laser shows more dynamic and interactive, I'd be all for developing for it.

[masterpj]

This is very interesting, the 3D realtime rendition is also very very good!

[Stoney3K]

This is very interesting, the 3D realtime rendition is also very very good!

The 3D rendering is done on the Broadcom VideoCore chip which takes care of all of the nitty gritty such as shaders and all of that stuff you need for displaying 3D on a raster display.

It would be quite pointless to render 3D vector graphics to a frame buffer just so you can take advantage of the speed of the graphics chip, and at the same time waste time by having to trace it back into vector data again (with all possible errors to boot) instead of just applying a simple mathematical transform to project 3D vectors into 2D.

I think the community would need to start agreeing on some standards for things like frame/point transmission (generator to DAC) and on formats for API's and rendering graphs. If there's some agreement on that, it's easier for other developers to invent new stuff without having to start from scratch every time.

Also, if systems like this become more commonplace, I think there's a good chance we're going to move from a traditional setup of 1 'generator' device feeding multiple projectors into a more decentralized setup where each projector generates its own data on demand.

[drlava]

The Etherdream is a good board for people who want to get started with a ready made DAC right away. The Etherdream is powerful enough for most applications, but it may lack the processing power for 'really cool stuff', and with that I mean stuff that you could only do on a board like the Lasergraph DSP.

The 'really cool stuff' that you're talking about is already possible inexpensively with LSX laser show software, you should really check it out some time. With this you can use with the Etherdream or any DAC of your choosing. There are advantages to having the processing engine on the computer, that, while at first it may seem like a good idea to have it on the DAC, eventually the flexibility of the computer interface (and the ability to upgrade computers as they come out instead of redesigning your DAC as new hardware comes out) gives you greater control, and this is what LSX is all about - dynamic control. In fact your desire 'procedural dynamic frames' is right off my LSX announcement page title

I've created it as a way for the community to express themselves through whatever images come to their minds, and also as a tool where amazing things can be created just through playing around. If that sounds like something you'd like to work on, let's chat!

[masterpj]

The 3D rendering is done on the Broadcom VideoCore chip which takes care of all of the nitty gritty such as shaders and all of that stuff you need for displaying 3D on a raster display.

It would be quite pointless to render 3D vector graphics to a frame buffer just so you can take advantage of the speed of the graphics chip, and at the same time waste time by having to trace it back into vector data again (with all possible errors to boot) instead of just applying a simple mathematical transform to project 3D vectors into 2D.

I think the community would need to start agreeing on some standards for things like frame/point transmission (generator to DAC) and on formats for API's and rendering graphs. If there's some agreement on that, it's easier for other developers to invent new stuff without having to start from scratch every time.

Also, if systems like this become more commonplace, I think there's a good chance we're going to move from a traditional setup of 1 'generator' device feeding multiple projectors into a more decentralized setup where each projector generates its own data on demand.

I want one of these, for real!
And yes your right