Laser Safety Smartphone App

[Insanity]

Comes from Laser Visuals, say no more...

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/laser...452579944?mt=8

Mark

[andy_con]

Shame he didn't do one fir windows phones

[kitatit]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the heads up

I just got it and I like.

I just had a look at laser visuals site and the laser guard software sounds very interesting.
http://www.laservisuals.com/

Does any one have it? Which version, what's it like?

Cheers
Kit

[White-Light]

There was supposed to be a free version which many of us signed up for about 2 years ago, but I don't know of anyone that actually received it.

Pity because for those of us who couldn't have afforded the full package, it would perhaps have helped and wouldn't have cost sales of the other versions given we couldn't have afforded them anyway. For those who could afford them, it would probably have been a great promotion and persuader to buy the more featured versions.

[Displaser]

There was supposed to be a free version which many of us signed up for about 2 years ago, but I don't know of anyone that actually received it.

Pity because for those of us who couldn't have afforded the full package, it would perhaps have helped and wouldn't have cost sales of the other versions given we couldn't have afforded them anyway. For those who could afford them, it would probably have been a great promotion and persuader to buy the more featured versions.

After Mark brought this up on the forum today, I searched on "laser safety" at the app store. LVR Limited does have a free Laser Hazard Distance app, in addition to the two others - Laser Show Safety ($6.99) and Laser Safety ($9.99). I have yet to download any of these apps, but at first glance they look like nice tools. Price looks very reasonable.

Glad to see these tools for the iPhone.

Thanks Mark for the "heads-up"!

Greg

[norty303]

Laser Show Safety appears (from the screen shots) to include the reference material found in Laser Safety, so looks to be the better buy as it's cheaper. Not sure if the free one has been updated recently, but I downloaded it about a week or 2 back and the number selector wheels appeared to be bugged. I'll give it another go I think.

[JStewart]

I’m pleased to hear that the laser safety apps are being of some interest to people. Just to clarify what the three apps do.

Laser Hazard Distance – Is a free NOHD calculator for visible lasers. It has been designed deliberately to have a simple user interface so that someone that has never really looked at, or appreciates what different laser parameters mean, can just dial in the power, and divergence, and get a feel for how long the hazard distance is. This is meant for anyone from a laser pointer user, through to a basic light show user. The picker wheels for setting the output power have been designed to auto scale when the user switches from mW to W and vice versa, so that novice users can see what the equivalent mW/W are as they dial up a power. I can see that if you are not aware of this happening it might be perceived as a bug, but it is not.

Laser Show Safety – is a paid app, that goes into more detail in terms of exposure analysis, coping with laser powers up to 50W. And able to consider exposure for a wide range of different effects. Again it has been designed to be easy to use, (although no auto-ranging picker wheels on this one), and provides a quick indication of exposure conditions. It’s something useful to be able take it out of your pocket and show the safety officer a hazard analysis in the palm of your hand. You can also email the results to yourself or any other person. The app also contains a few pages of useful reference material that will be of use. The calculated exposure conditions, can be set to display in either ANSI or IEC notation, so that it can be used worldwide.

Laser Safety – is another paid app, this time intended for wider laser users, as the next release (v1.1, which is currently being prepared for Apple’s review team, and will be available as a free update to users upon release), features a full MPE calculator capable for providing assessments for laser sources ranging through 180nm – 1mm ( i.e. UV/Vis/IR ). It also features a more complex analysis of pulsed laser radiation. Hence the slightly higher price than the Laser Show Safety app. – But even so, someone could buy this app, buy a brand new iPod Touch 8GB and still have change over buying a PC based app with the same calculation capability!

For light show users, Laser Show Safety is your best bet.

All three apps have been written natively in Objective C, and will run on any Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, running iOS v3.1 through to v5. The apps will not work on Android or Windows phone devices. I may port them over at a future point, but I have other software developments that I want to complete first.

Talking of which…, for those of you interested in the fuller analysis capabilities of the Scanguard PC based software, details and release of this will follow in the New Year. I know some of you have been waiting for a long time to get the free ‘lite’ version of the software (years in fact!), but I can assure you it will be coming, and just like we have offered a free version of the iOS app, the same will hold true for PC users. The new full version of Scanguard has some pretty neat features that are going to make hazard analysis of laser effects much easier, and provide some interesting quantitative data on pretty much any kind of laser show effect.

I hope that helps to answer a few questions about the apps and the use, and also brings people up to date with Scanguard.

Thanks for your support, and may I wish you all a Happy Christmas, and successful (and safe) New Year!

James Stewart
LVR Limited

[GT500]

Hi James,

When is the next LVR Laser display safety course planned for?

[norty303]

The picker wheels for setting the output power have been designed to auto scale when the user switches from mW to W and vice versa, so that novice users can see what the equivalent mW/W are as they dial up a power. I can see that if you are not aware of this happening it might be perceived as a bug, but it is not.

Hi James

No, I got that bit. It was more the fact that when you first go to the divergence selector, the integer wheel is on '1' and the decimal place wheel only shows down to .5. I'm fairly sure that the very first time I tried it, the numbers were jumbled too (6,4,5,7,etc). Maybe my iPhone is on the wonk.

When you change the integer wheel to 0 and back again it seems to reset it, and this seems to only happen the first load. I'll try and uninstall and retry it to confirm.

Also, is the divergence really limited to 0.5mr min to 2mr max?

Thanks

[JStewart]

The next training course will probably be around the end of February or early March time. We’ll decide a date after the holiday period, and post it on our website. It normally falls on a Monday.

Norty, well done for spotting the small glitch with the right hand picker wheel when the program is first run. It does indeed initially only show a limited range for the divergence. It is easily corrected by joggling the left hand wheel, but I will amend that behaviour in the next update. As a prize for spotting that glitch you can have a free update when the next version is in the store. Seriously though, thanks for pointing that out. There is a feature in the software to email me directly, which is more reliable than me popping onto the forum by chance.

The range of divergence on the free app is set over 0.5mr through to 2mr.