Laser Projector (Red, Green, Purple) "Laser 3D Party Light" from Spencer's

[james]

If you think about it for a minute..... 0 to 63 is what you can count in 6 bits!

That's where this palette came from many years ago.

It was developed in Amiga OS, I think.

So anything past 63 is truly undefined.

I used the 64th index to represent black in LaserBoy because it's a very useful thing to do!

[james]

Cool... I'll try to compile it when I get a chance. Or if you post the binary, I'm sure one of us would try it out sooner.
DogP

I already know it's going to take some twiddling. I have no way to test it! I thought you had the development environment all set up!

James.

[DogP]

Excellent work, DogP, top notch! If we meet at a LEM I need to buy you a libation of your choice.

Cherry Coke is my drink of choice.

So, the MCU inserts, what, 3 or 4 vertex periods of dead time to turn on the laser between blanks and lit vectors? Am I reading that right?

I measured it more closely here... when one sample period is ~60us, it stalls the second sample for about 4 periods (stretching the second sample to about 5 periods long).

Does the laser driver chip have any sort of bias adjustment on it?

I haven't really analyzed this circuit, but I don't really think there is. It's got a CN5611 current driver with R(Iset) connected to a resistor and pot (in series). There's also a transistor, which I believe is what gets turned on/off by the MCU... not sure if it powers on/off the CN5611, or is used like described in the datasheet for dimming (driving Iset).

OH, and another thing... the ILDA test pattern looks really neat on the scope! But, I notice that the transitions between points are along a 'grid' and not so much on the diagonal... is the MCU outputting X, then Y, instead of both simultaneously?

Good eye... it drives X first, then Y, about 2.5us later.

It was really fugly... too fugly.

Wow... sounds like it!

BTW, when the son got home last night I had the laser running in the family room and he flipped for all the Nintendo graphics in that package you put together... really awesome of you to share! Thanks again.

Cool! Good to hear he wasn't like... "Meh, give me a hologram projector and I'll be impressed". :P

After some testing, it looks like my copy of the Spencer projector draws color index 64 (black) as WHITE. Also index 65. And index 255. I didn't try them all, but I suspect there is no "lit black" option in this showcard. Also, other than index 64, there is no color in the default palette that does not have at least one channel at or above 128.

Yep... I took another quick look at it, and found the same thing. It also appears that if the upper byte is non-zero, it handles it as a blank point (it seems to interpret blank and last point as the same, as well as setting any of the reserved bits).

And wow... for $130... might be worth it just for the parts. I mean, how much do a pair of 15K galvos cost on ebay? Consider you get a set of lasers as well, and you have parts for a nice Lissajous demo.

Exactly... I'd say the galvos/driver are equivalent to about $120 on ebay (chinalasershop has a 20K kit is $125 and 12K kit is $115)... I believe we have the chinalasershop 20K galvos w/ the 12K driver. Then for $10, we get the lasers, dichros, standalone controller, case, etc.

I already know it's going to take some twiddling. I have no way to test it! I thought you had the development environment all set up!

I do, but I've got some poorly hacked changes that I need to revert... and tribble's the one with the experience tweaking these Spencer's files.

DogP

[tribble]

OK, so I tore myself away from the fog long enough to tweak the spencerizer and take these pictures for you.

These graphics were created by LaserBoy originally, either with the line or circle arc commands. Here are the projections before/after running through the Spencerizer:

Rainbow Circles, before:


Rainbow Circles, after:


Row of dots, before:


Row of dots, after:


The spencerizer is ALPHA software. It is UNSUPPORTED, although if you give me feedback I will definitely consider it when I have time. I promise NOTHING. It supports ONLY type 0 files. If you want to play with it, I will send it to you, but if it ends up erasing your hard drive, I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE. No warranty expressed or implied, nor fitness for any purpose, and all that stuff.

Image files projected are attached. Swamidog, if you wanted to do a comparison, rainbow circles might be an interesting one to look at.

comparison.zip

[swamidog]

ok. i'll grab it after dinner tonight and take a couple photos for you.

OK, so I tore myself away from the fog long enough to tweak the spencerizer and take these pictures for you.

These graphics were created by LaserBoy originally, either with the line or circle arc commands. Here are the projections before/after running through the Spencerizer:

Rainbow Circles, before:


Rainbow Circles, after:


Row of dots, before:


Row of dots, after:


The spencerizer is ALPHA software. It is UNSUPPORTED, although if you give me feedback I will definitely consider it when I have time. I promise NOTHING. It supports ONLY type 0 files. If you want to play with it, I will send it to you, but if it ends up erasing your hard drive, I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE. No warranty expressed or implied, nor fitness for any purpose, and all that stuff.

Image files projected are attached. Swamidog, if you wanted to do a comparison, rainbow circles might be an interesting one to look at.

comparison.zip

[tribble]

James... I am going to try your code... I just need to finish the build environment setup for LB. That may take me some more time. I just wanted to reach a stopping point with the test platform first. Thanks again for all of your help! This would not have been accomplished so quickly without your help.

[james]

Looking good!

[swamidog]

looks great here. pardon the low quality cell phone photo.

OK, so I tore myself away from the fog long enough to tweak the spencerizer and take these pictures for you.

These graphics were created by LaserBoy originally, either with the line or circle arc commands. Here are the projections before/after running through the Spencerizer:

Rainbow Circles, before:


Rainbow Circles, after:


Row of dots, before:


Row of dots, after:


The spencerizer is ALPHA software. It is UNSUPPORTED, although if you give me feedback I will definitely consider it when I have time. I promise NOTHING. It supports ONLY type 0 files. If you want to play with it, I will send it to you, but if it ends up erasing your hard drive, I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE. No warranty expressed or implied, nor fitness for any purpose, and all that stuff.

Image files projected are attached. Swamidog, if you wanted to do a comparison, rainbow circles might be an interesting one to look at.

comparison.zip

[DogP]

Digikey part numbers 751-1012-ND, 475-1350-ND or PDB-C110-ND for example, would work just fine.

Just out of curiosity... would one of the light to frequency converter ICs work for this? I've got quite a few TSL230R ICs... Radio Shack used to sell them, then had them on clearance for 0.99, so I grabbed some. These: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8940? ... according to the datasheet, at 1x sensitivity, it should do up to at least 100mw/(cm^2), and supposedly it's temperature compensated for visible light, and has a plot showing spectral responsivity. It'd be really easy to just measure the frequency and determine the power from the graphs... but I'm thinking the sensor size may be too small (it's 0.92mm^2, but at 1x, the effective size is 100x less). Could I take the area of the sensor and the area of the beam and compute it, or is that just dumb? Not that I really need a power sensor, but I like building weird stuff, and having those ICs is burning a hole in my parts box.

Oh, and I looked at the before and after pictures with the amp changes... very little, if any, improvement from upgrading the LM324s and TDA2030As. But, since I already did the X half, I went ahead and did the Y as well... and upgraded the LM324 on the controller board too.

On another note... it was foggy tonight, so I had some fun with the beams, shining out my back window into the yard... here are a few cool shots I took:






tribble: Did you take any cool pics?

DogP

[tribble]

I didn't get many cool pix last night; I was just enjoying the show and shooting a little video. I don't have a video camera so I was using a p&s from 5 years ago with SD video... kinda iffy.