I'm new! ... tips to getting started?

[0okamiDigital]

Hi everyone! I need a little help getting on the right track.

I'm well aware the search is my best friend however, I'm quite new here and not familiar with some of the terms, hardware or setups. With that in mind, I am having a slightly difficult time organizing information.

Does anyone have any resources, book recommendations, tips, writeups, links to posts they would like to share for someone getting started in learning about laser projectors?

My goal is to build and RGB laser system with a budget of $1000.00 USD to $1800.00 USD max (reasonable?.) I would like it capable of doing graphics and animations like these master pieces (imo):





I would love to read work logs from members who have built their own RGB laser projectors.

[mixedgas]

The control software in video "B" is LDS or Phoenix, which is derived from LDS.
The creator of both of those videos visits here from time to time.

Do you any have basic electronics skills?

Where are you located?


Steve

[0okamiDigital]

The control software in video "B" is LDS or Phoenix, which is derived from LDS.
The creator of both of those videos visits here from time to time.
Do you any have basic electronics skills?
Where are you located?
Steve

Oh, thats nice to know ^_^ Those videos inspired me to learn how its done and try it hands on.

As for electronics skills, Im not a pro... but I've done game pad conversions like snes and psx to pc LPT ports, mod chipping ps2 consoles. basic circuit soldering etc. Nothing involving micro controller programing.

I'm currently located in Athens Ohio, USA looking forward to the next close by LEM whenever or wherever that may be.

[masterpj]

The control software in video "B" is LDS or Phoenix, which is derived from LDS.
The creator of both of those videos visits here from time to time.

Do you any have basic electronics skills?

Where are you located?


Steve

It's phoenix

[blowfly]

If you have basic soldering and multimeter skills, have patience, and are willing to spend a lot of time reading, you will be able to build a projector that can do stuff like this the videos you posted.

There are a few larger variables to think about. Throughout all this are trade offs between time, complexity, stability, and money.

Laser modules - the more power, the higher the cost. You can spend a lot of money here. You can build the red and blue (or violet) colors by harvesting laser diodes from CD & DVD drives which can save some money.
Hardware - the cheapest hardware is the sound card DAC solution which is a sound card modified to output ILDA standard signals. A lot of people start this way.
Software - There are decent cheap choices like Spaghetti or even free LFI Player. The FTP server has a lot of good freeware/shareware to play with too.
Enclosure - if you want to do public shows, then you need to have an enclosure that meets FDA regulations and have all the required safety features. In my experience going this route and doing all the paperwork will add 40% to the time required for your build.

Have fun My advice is to spend as much time as you can reading through old posts on this forum. People are pretty nice too if you have specific questions. Hitting up a LEM is also super helpful and again people tend too be pretty nice at this events.

Good luck!
Mike

[LaNeK779]

the way i approach this is this

start single colour and cheap, probably green, around 50-100mw. it is really visible, you won't be dissapointed

invest in a decent scanner set, something around 300usd.

put everything in a case and start familiarising with your dac and software of choice.

all the above would not set you back more than 1000usd (if you choose a commrcial dac and software)

than, as time passes, you can go multicolour

[White-Light]

If you were going to look at software in the price bracket of Phoenix Live, then I'd say take a look at Pangolin QuickShow. There's a very good reason most people on here buy Pangolin, its the dogs and will grow with your hobby so you won't need to keep upgrading! It also comes with thousands of free frames as you can see from all of the workspace tabs. (The screenshot is of the old version v1.0 - the new version (2.0) is even better)

The web site is here and you can also download a free demo copy:

http://www.pangolin.com/QS/



Otherwise if you're going to go the cheap route, then as others have said, consider making your own soundcard DAC and using Spaghetti.

[michelrietveld]

that is funny, i see a lot of cues different than in my qs 2.0, is there a que graphic expansion pack? Or a place to download pangolin graphic cues?
Michel

[White-Light]

I think whats happened is for the screenshot they've dragged a lot of cues from different categories onto the one page. On that themes page I'm seeing Abstracts, People, Animals etc even though the page category is Themes 2.

Some things will have changed as well from Version 1.0. However, you still have thousands of graphics cues in version 2.0, many of them better so I don't see any cause for alarm and of course you have a hugely expanded beam show section which has gone up from only a handful of cues to a literally packed workspace.

I've re-created the exact same scene here in QS 2.0:



For the eagle eyed, the Lets Dance! text is done via Quick Text not a cue.

You can download shows, cues, utilities and expansion packs from Pangolin Show Space (google it then register your FB3 serial to get a log in).