Creating My own laser show software

[Osithlon]

Hi everyone, I am a total newbie to lasers

I want to begin with laser software programming, I want to incorporate laser shows into our software. I need help with the firts steps, in order to to create a tiny C++ software that reads an .ild file and show it on a demo screen, not a laser yet.

I have been searching the web and the forums but not found the key. could you give any advice please?

Any example in how to read a .ild file a draw it on the screen.

thanks in advance

[dzodzo]

i'm no programmer but i would start by studying the ILDA file format (for example http://www.laserist.org/StandardsDoc...finaldraft.pdf ), there are more versions so i guess you need to see what are the differences between versions
OR
you can do what most of us living in the future were dreaming of since ILDA became so obsolete - propose a design of new format that meets today needs and all the hot chicks will Hail to the king

[james]

LaserBoy is 100% generic C++! It is also free, open source and under the GPL.

[JohnYayas]

DrLava of the LSX software gives away a free DAC toolkit which is, I think, a C++ API to allow sending laser frames to a multitude of DACs. It would be a good toolkit to grab for when you want to actually send the images to a laser projector. For ILDA processing, you could lift the ILDA file reading/writing code from LaserBoy since it is open source. Drawing to a screen is childs place once you get the frame points since they are XY coordinates in 16 bit space.

Like you, as a new person to lasers I also wanted to write my own laser show software and have been doing so for a handful of years now. There is a huge gap between displaying ILDA files and creating laser show software. I'd be happy to discuss any of this offline.

[james]

For ILDA processing, you could lift the ILDA file reading/writing code from LaserBoy since it is open source

That's fine, as long as you adhere to the rules of the GPL or make other arrangements with me, personally!

[Osithlon]

Thanks a lot for your answers, i will take a look to the laserboy, and make some questions about it


thanks again

[james]

I think you will find that it is a very nice set of classes that are all part of a very happy hierarchy that all come together to form a grand solution!

Make sure you get the latest version and watch for occasional updates.

[mixedgas]

The API is over at Chris' place.

http://www.fab-favreau.com/index.php...ShowController

[Osithlon]

Hi James

I got LaserBoy_2012_05_03, is this the last one?

As I wrote on the first post Im a newbie, so Im a bit lost, I really dont know if Laserboy can help me with this. Now i have my projector, not without a 2 week testing problems and a warranty back issue because the projector was defective.



Now I have a software with some animated .gif schemas, and i want to incorporate laser to this software. The fisrt idea was to use DRLavas UDAC to directly draw what the schema that the user selects. After doing some tests with DrLAvas UDAC I thought it might be easier to carry out my idea in another way.

I thought if most of my animated schemas are predesigned why not create ILDA files for these animated schemas, store them and when the user selects one of these schemas I will just have to open the ILDA file and play it.

I have been taking a look to Laserboy but really dont know where to start making tests. Can you give me some advice/help with this? Im working in c++.

As JohnYayas, said, maybe i can fit some Laserboys code to my project, there is no problem with the GPL, as my code will be open source. And about any kind of arrangements PM me and told me what kind of arrangements are you talking about, maybe we can do something.

If we can solve this first step with Laserboy it will be great, then I can explain you the second step of my idea.

Thanks in advance

Osithlon

Creator of nothing yet!!

[james]

Hi, Osithlon.

LaserBoy will let you open ILDA files that already exist or create new color vector art. From this you can create animations with a fairly large set of predefined effects for individual frames, a selected group of frames or the entire frame set. These effects are named and can be found in LaserBoy_frame_effects.cpp and LaserBoy_frame_set_effects.cpp.

To create an animation of a single frame, get that frame in the current view screen. From the main menu hit o to output. Hit 1 for ild. Hit 4 to generate and save frame effect. Pick an effect by name and type it. Hit [Enter]. A new ILDA file will be generated. It will have the name of the effect. If you use this effect again, it will overwrite the previous file of the same name. Open the new file by hitting i from the main menu to input a file, 1 for ild. Type the name of the file. Hit [Enter]. Type 1 to replace the contents of LaserBoy space with the new file.

Some of the frame_set_effects require selected frames. You select a frame by hitting the space bar when the frame is in the view. You can also select a series of consecutive frames using the parenthesis. The ( marks the start of the selection and the ) marks the end. You can use the space bar to select or deselect any frame either inside or outside of this selection. If a frame_set_effect requires selected frames and you have none, it will tell you.

Since you know C++ you can look at those effects files and see many examples. You can copy and modify them to suit your own needs. You will of course need to recompile.

Once you have some nice animated frames, you can make waves from them. Once you have a folder full of waves, you can get Spider Player and set it to loop playback of the wave. Then you can just double click on one wave after another and have all kinds of cool effects!

http://spider-player.com

James.