Allow me to introduce myself.

[Nozzledog]

Hi,
My name is Darrell.
I am a Firefighter/laser nut in SoCal.
I bought my first HeNe laser 25 years ago and after having to do a lot of parental persuading, turned my bedroom into a holographic studio. They were not real keen on how much weight I was putting on the floor joists to make a stable table, but they were happy I wasn't blowing things up I guess.
The holograms were fun and my career path almost went in the direction of laser technology. Very fascinated with the whole laser interferometry. That's about when I got offered a job with a fire department and my laser got pushed to the backburner. I have always kepts small lasers around though and my kids love the little disco/laser lights I put up for xmas.
A friend just gave me one of those low cost / made in China RGB show lasers and has now got me interested in creating some laser animations and possibly making this a full time hobby. The laser is 500mw total, not sure the division, and has a SD card reader for loading ILD files and an ILDA port along with the dmx512 ports. Right now I can only use the SD card until I buy some hardware to connect the ILDA port to my computer. One problem being, I have no idea how to config the card to recognize the files, it needs some kinda playlist and .eff file to work (any help here would be appreciated).
I'm familiar with Inkscape, and went ahead and got ILD SoS to play with the two together. Working on my first animation now. I will post it as soon as possible.
Any suggestions on ILDA controllers would be great.
I hope to be getting some 3d animation software soon and posting what I can here to help out. Granted, in the beginning, I know I will need more help than I can return. I have been going thru many of the threads here and I am extremely impressed with how knowledgeable every one is. THis looks like a great site.

[WookieBoy]

Welcome Darrell!

Yeah this is a great community. I joined for similar reasons about a year ago and am still learning loads.
I'd fully reccomend going to a LEM if there's one near you, but try not to blow your laser up there like I did trying to get mine into a smaller case!
Be warned though, as many others here will tell you, this hobby is highly addictive and LOVES to empty your wallet/bank account/credit card! ;-)

[swamidog]

hey nozzleodg, welcome to PL.

since you're already using inkscape and ildsos, you might look into using LSX (laser show express) and an etherdream dac to control your system. we always like pictures.

Hi,
My name is Darrell.
I am a Firefighter/laser nut in SoCal.
I bought my first HeNe laser 25 years ago and after having to do a lot of parental persuading, turned my bedroom into a holographic studio. They were not real keen on how much weight I was putting on the floor joists to make a stable table, but they were happy I wasn't blowing things up I guess.
The holograms were fun and my career path almost went in the direction of laser technology. Very fascinated with the whole laser interferometry. That's about when I got offered a job with a fire department and my laser got pushed to the backburner. I have always kepts small lasers around though and my kids love the little disco/laser lights I put up for xmas.
A friend just gave me one of those low cost / made in China RGB show lasers and has now got me interested in creating some laser animations and possibly making this a full time hobby. The laser is 500mw total, not sure the division, and has a SD card reader for loading ILD files and an ILDA port along with the dmx512 ports. Right now I can only use the SD card until I buy some hardware to connect the ILDA port to my computer. One problem being, I have no idea how to config the card to recognize the files, it needs some kinda playlist and .eff file to work (any help here would be appreciated).
I'm familiar with Inkscape, and went ahead and got ILD SoS to play with the two together. Working on my first animation now. I will post it as soon as possible.
Any suggestions on ILDA controllers would be great.
I hope to be getting some 3d animation software soon and posting what I can here to help out. Granted, in the beginning, I know I will need more help than I can return. I have been going thru many of the threads here and I am extremely impressed with how knowledgeable every one is. THis looks like a great site.

[Bradfo69]

Welcome to PL! You have joined the right place and... have already been given the cursory warning about whatever hope you had of ever maintaining financial responsibily again.

[mixedgas]

We have two guys on the group doing things with the "Spencers Gifts" projectors. They need a frame file and a .eff file.
So I'd search the forum for posts within the past two months with "spencers" in the text.

Those guys probably have some back channel tricks for dealing with the SD card. Well, I sorta know the one does.

Welcome to PL, and say goodbye to your spending money.

PS, Thank you, For your service to your community.

Steve

[Darcean]

Wow, a person from my neck of the woods! Welcome to the forums!

[Vidal Wolf]

Welcome to the forums Nozzledog!

[Nozzledog]

Wow, a person from my neck of the woods! Welcome to the forums!

Anyone who quotes Bertrand Russell is ok by me!
I live in Rancho, work in Berdoo.

Thanks for the advice Steve,
I looked into the Spencers laser thread, it looks like the SD card commands are somewhat different. The one I have needs a playlist file, which is just a list of EFFEC00*.EFF files. Those EFFEC00*.EFF file then list the .ILF files that you want to play, but I can only get the first file to play over and over. It never gets to the next file.

[mixedgas]

Zip the ILDA and the EFF files in a Zip and put them in this thread as a attachment. We'll see what we can do. What make/model is this beast?

Your zipping them so they can be opened in a Hex editor if need be.

Was there a CD in the box with some show creation software, or a download link?

Looks like you made some local friends. That gets things accelerated.

Steve

[Nozzledog]

From the search I did, this is the laser I have. Cost looks to be around $300 shipped.

The SD card came with these files on it.(attached zip)
The playlist.pes and effec00*.eff files can be viewed thru notepad

the playlist.pes is a list of the EFFEC00*.EFF files
The EFFEC00*.EFF files are a list of the .ild files
I have been able to get a single .ild file of my own to play by making it the only file listed in the first .EFF file, but it will loop instead of playing any other files I may have.