ILDA Controller and Software

[buffo]

Liteglow:

A bounce mirror is a mirror that you mount on the wall away from your projector. You "bounce" a beam off the mirror to send it in a new direction. If you have several bounce mirrors set up you can turn a single beam into many beams.

The bounce mirrors I have are either 5 x 8 inches, or 8 x 10 inches. I've never had a problem hitting them repeatedly when using my 8-bit DAC, though I only have about a 30 foot throw. (The longer your throw is, the more difficult it is to hit a given spot with just 8 bits of accuracy.)

Adam

[liteglow]

ok

I understand that the beam from the projector hit a mirror !!

But what happend when you do a random show, and everythime the effect on the show passes the mirror !
The light will reflect randomly ?

[Nerdy Maurine]

How do I set an avatar on this board?

[liteglow]

How do I set an avatar on this board?

Hi and welcome

Go to "PROFILE" and upload a avatar there

i think...

[buffo]

But what happend when you do a random show, and everythime the effect on the show passes the mirror !
The light will reflect randomly ?

No, the light will always reflect the same. (Well, almost the same - there will be slight differences depending on which part of the mirror you hit.) Remember that the beam is always going to come from the same place (the output window of your scan head) and the mirror is always going to be pointing in the same direction, so the reflected beam will always be the same.

Draw a diagram on a piece of scrap paper showing the scan head, the mirror, and the incoming and reflected beams, and you'll immediately see what I mean. The beam can only move a fraction of a degree left, right, up, or down before it will move off the mirror. So if the scan head is at the front of the room and the mirror is at the back of the room, and the mirror is 8 inches square, then the reflected beam will be somewhere inside a 16 inch box when it strikes the wall at the front of the room where the scan head is. Make sense?

If you have many bounce mirrors set up and you start scanning a complex pattern, then yeah, some of the pattern will probably hit one or more of the bounce mirrors, so you'll get some reflections off them. But you don't typically use bounce mirrors with graphics - you use them with beamshows. (And even if you were using them with a scanned graphics, the portion of the overall pattern that would be reflected by a bounce mirror would be tiny... It would look like a weak beam, or at most a small arc...)

So long as you've adjusted the mirrors so that they don't reflect the beams into the audience, you won't have any problems if you decide to scan a pattern (or graphic) that might spill over and hit one or more of your bounce mirrors. In fact, one effect that I like to use with beamshows is a large sine wave that slowly ripples in the air. This looks really cool with lots of fog... But it also has a good chance of striking one of the bounce mirrors. Nevertheless, you can hardly notice it when it happens.

If you wanted to do graphics AND beams together in the same show, then you could hang a small scrim between your scan head and the audience and only display graphics at 1/2 size so they just fit on the scrim. Then do your beam effects OUTSIDE of the scrim area. (Normally beam shows are directed TOWARDS the audience, while graphics are displayed away from the audience and up onto a wall...)

Adam

[buffo]

How do I set an avatar on this board?

Click on the "profile" link at the top right of every screen... Scroll down to near the bottom, and there will be a section for you to select an avatar. I don't know Spec has enabled the uploading of avatars though... I think you need to have the picture already hosted somewhere on the internet. (If I remember correctly, he turned this feature off because he was having problems with people uploading *HUGE* pictures and then trying to use them as avatars. They really need to be no larger than 150 pixels tall by 150 pixels wide, but some people were trying to use pictures at 2048 x 1536!!!)

Adam

[eric343]

Christoph, isn't th Bilda2 just for Unix/Linux systems?

Nope, the hardware is quite indifferent to Linux or XP or whatever - once you got a driver supporting the hardware.

I have it up and running on my w2k and XP laptops using HE-Laserscan, works just fine. And by using a powered USB hub, at quite a distance, too :-)

Are you using HE-laserscan's built-in bILDA driver or the Mamba bILDA driver with HE-Laerscan?

[chw9999]

Christoph, isn't th Bilda2 just for Unix/Linux systems?

Nope, the hardware is quite indifferent to Linux or XP or whatever - once you got a driver supporting the hardware.

I have it up and running on my w2k and XP laptops using HE-Laserscan, works just fine. And by using a powered USB hub, at quite a distance, too :-)

Are you using HE-laserscan's built-in bILDA driver or the Mamba bILDA driver with HE-Laerscan?

Errr, good question - I forgot :-)

However, checking my files I can conclude the driver was developed by Robin (http://www.linux-laser.org/) who soldered bILDA2 together... we installed the driver (or rather drivers - in a nightly hot needle installment and development session ;-)) - and it worked... You may want to contact Robin for futher information, he speaks english as well...

Cheers
Christoph
P.S. Anyone tried the Lumax DAC? Check out http://www.lumax.de/ (mostly German). However, it just shrunk... Seems to be a possible competition for the Medialas board.
Check out this as well: http://www.laserfreak.net/forum/view...ighlight=lumax and here: http://www.bertimausi.de/lumax4.JPG