Hey People...
Took a few days off to head to Florida to help my Mom with some yard work. (Which is why I've been absent - did you miss me? :roll: No? :evil: Figures... 8) ) Anyway, I took a day off from spreading dirt around the yard and drove to Astroguy's place to check out his recently completed RGB projector.
He's got one of the MaXyz red modules (200 mw at ~ 650 nm), plus about 65 mw of 473nm blue and about 75 mw of 532 nm green. The red and blue lasers support analog blanking, but the green only does TTL. He's got some 30Kpps galvos, and he's running Mamba Black with the EasyLase USB DAC. He's done some great work machining mounts for the lasers, etc, and has the whole mess enclosed in a fairly large housing that has fans, filters, indicator lights and switches, a keyswitch, and a surge protector. (All he needs is a shutter and he's ready for a CDRH variance application.)
Now, I have to say that on the face of it (that is, based on the numbers) you'd think that his color balance would be awful. But after geeking out with Fred for the better part of a day, I can tell you that his system ROCKS!!! The graphics looked great! And though the beams were a trifle dim, the colors were incredible... We played around with the "rainbow" effect in Mamba and found that just about any pattern looked better with this effect turned on.
All I can say is - WOW! The colors were just incredible... Fred tried to take some pictures, but I don't know if they turned out or not. (The room was brightly lit; it was daytime and there were several windows, which is why the beams didn't show up as well.) I'm sure it would have been a lot more impressive at night, but it was a good 3 hour drive back to my Mom's place and I just couldn't stay any longer.
I will admit that it would have been better to have more red - at least for the beams. But even with the goofy color balance numbers, the system was able to produce *stunning* blends of color. Now I understand why MechEng3 (and others) said that analog blanking trumps TTL by a mile and a half....
And when you add in music - music that is syncronized to the show, mind you - the result is downright mesmerizing. And all this on the Mamba system with the Easylase DAC. Very cool, and quite reasonably priced too!
We played the partial clip of the GFX show for "Hit That", by "The Offspring" that Fred and I had assembled, and that's when we learned that the frame rate I selected was too high. Ok - live and learn. I've promised Fred that I'll re-visit that project once I've managed to upgrade my system so that we can complete the song. Still, even with the flicker it looked pretty cool.
And as a result of this visit, I've decided that I simply *MUST* upgrade my hardware. Not being able to sync a show to music is killing me! I also need to get to work on those ISMET AOM's I've got sitting on the shelf. (That's one way for me to get intensity control of my argons...) Now if I could just rob a bank or something, I'd be all set. (Note to FBI agents listening in: I'm just kidding about robbing a bank!)
And Fred - if any of those pictures turned out - POST THEM IN THE GALLERY! (please!)
Adam
PS: A *HUGE* thank you to Fred and his wife for their hospitality. Thanks for everything!