Laser noobie looking for help

[JimBo]

A couple of points that you have missed I think.

The price is €2999 which is pretty much $4,500.
It states >500mW are analogue, that one is 300mW (<500mW).
It also says air cooled, I would make sure it is TEC.
Also double check that IR filters are installed.

Jim

[JOrton19]

On the website it says 2999 euros but in their ebay store they sell them for around 3000 USD.
Also on their ebay store it says that you can request to have the pro 300 come with
analog modulation. I will check about the "TEC" air cooling and the IR filters.
They claim that it comes certified. Is there any other product in this price range
that is better?
Thanks,
Joey

[buffo]

Better products? Hard to say. Less expensive products? Certainly. But if you *need* the projector to come with a CDRH variance, then you're going to pay extra for it. I'm not sure that anyone here has ever posted a review of pre-varianced projector before. So you may be flying blind on this one. (If you are willing to forgo the variance, then you can save some money and/or get more power.)

As far as color balance, there has been a *lot* of discussion in the forums here about the issue. Search for "Color Balance" and/or "RGB" for more info...

Adam

[JOrton19]

I am pretty sure i have decided on the laser I am going to get, and now i need to find a software/DAC. I have been looking at the alphalite system and i have read a lot about it on this website. It has been said that it freezes up constantly but also that they were very close to finding a solution to this problem. Have they found it yet with version 2.9? Also i was wondering if it can play back .ild files.

Basically what i am looking for in a software is something that I can "play along" with from a laptop. I do not need to be able to presynch it to music. I want to be able to click on my screen and have the laser change accordingly. Is this possible? Can alphalite even hook up to a laptop. I know it hooks up to the parrallel port of the pc but i don't know exactly what that is.

Thanks for the answers,
Joey

[buffo]

The Alphalite will connect to any laptop that has a parallel port. A parallel port is a 25-pin "D" shaped connector (two rows of pins) that used to be the standard for connecting a printer to a computer. (Most printers these days use the USB interface, but you can still find some that also support the parallel port.) The Alphalite will *not* work with any type of virtual parallel port - at least not with any that I've ever seen. (I'm talking about a USB-to-Parallel port adapter, or a PCMCIA-to-Parallel port adapter - that sort of thing.) The Laptop needs to have a 25-pin parallel port on the back for the Alphalite to work.

The old problem with the Alphalite software crashing was solved way back in the Spring of 2006. The problem was a memory leak that eventually chewed up all available ram in the machine, causing a crash. But that bug has been squashed. The software has been stable since version 2.86.

Version 2.9 (the latest version) adds a few new features, including a handy one that lets you turn off the ilda frame preview window on the bottom right of the screen. This makes loading a new directory really fast, since the software doesn't have to render little thumbnails of all the ilda files in the directory.

Yes, the Alphalite will play ilda files. It also supports a few other file formats, including the custom abstract and sine formats that are native to the Alphalite. It does not support 3D files, however. If you have any 3D files, they will render out as flat, 2D pictures. (Most ilda files you'll ever come across are 2D anyway, but there are some 3D ones out there.)

You can "play along" with the music using your laptop - either by using the keyboard or by clicking on files (or even the thumbnails) with the mouse. If you pre-load the images into a show, you can switch between files instantly. If you click on the files in the preview window, they load quite fast, but if it's a large file (say, an animation that lasts for 10-20 seconds), you will notice a delay while the file loads. This will also result in a static beam being displayed for a fraction of a second while the large file loads. To work around this problem, all you need to do is pre-load the files.

The output of the Alphalite is not as clean as other products. You may notice some jitter in the image, and there may be "tails" on some files where the lines aren't fully blanked like they should be. But for a starter system, it will get the job done. Have a look at the pictures in the gallery to see what I mean. I should mention that if you're planning on doing your shows for hire, you will probably want to upgrade to something nicer in short order... (Remember that the new Pangolin hobbyist product will likely only cost about $150 more than the Alphalite system.)

While we're on that subject, are you in fact going to use this in a professional (that is, commercial) laser show? If so, I would suggest that you build a metal mask for your projector's output window so that no matter *what* happens to your software, the beam simply can not hit the audience. (It is possible for a hardware or software failure to cause the galvos to deflect very far - perhaps farther than you expected - and you must be certain that it won't result in a static beam firing off into the crowd.)

Adam

[JOrton19]

Hello Everybody,
I have been eyeballing the "Laserworld pro 300 rgb" laser for a little while now. Its got a sixy mw blue sixty green and 200 red. It comes with 30k scanners, that they claim are the same ones that medialas uses. Watching the video, it seems that the green simply dominates the other colors mercilessly. I was wondering if it could be the camera or something? I've seen brighter looking blues in videos when they have less power relative to the other lasers. I know that this laser does not fit the "golden ratio" of colorbalance, but i've read that you can do okay with a green and a blue about the same power. It is very perplexing to me. If anyone could have a look and tell me what they think, that would be awesome. (The link is below)

Thanks,
Joey

http://www.laserworld.tv/index.php?id=133

[buffo]

Does it support analog blanking, or just TTL? (Can't see the site from work.)

If you go with the Alphalite, you'll only have TTL output anyway, so it won't matter right away. However, if you purchase the projector with analog blanking, you can make use of the feature later on when you upgrade to a better DAC and control software that supports analog color. (Analog color = millions of shades, instead of just 7.)

It's *expensive* to add analog blanking to a TTL-only laser projector...

Adam

[JOrton19]

I have heard that analog blanking diminishes the power of your laser and there is more "wasted" light. Is this true? If so, how prominent is it?

Thanks,
Joey

[buffo]

Not true. You absolutely *want* analog blanking if you can afford it.

The wasted power would only apply if you were using a PCAOM to get analog blanking, and in that case it would cost you around 15% of your power. But there's no need to use a PCAOM when you've got a solid state laser... You can blank it using the power supply.

So get analog if you can.

Adam

[JOrton19]

Is 10khz blanking sufficient for 30k scanning?

I am currently talking to the maker of a "FDA approved" laser show manufacturer "laserworld.tv". They have told me that they cannot get the accession number and variance because they are not in the US, but that they attatch all paper work needed to get a variance. It sounds kind of sketchy to me, but is this accurate. They say that their projectors comes with everything needed like shutter, key switch, led, etc.. Should they technically have an accesssion number to do business legally, even if they are based out of Germany? Also, Has anyone worked with laserworld before or know anything about them?
Thanks,
Joey