As much as you need, or as much as you can afford?

[laserlackey]

There's only so many times you can try to explain nicely before you have to bring out the attitude adjustment clue-by-four... But then your the "party pooper"/arrested for aggregated assault...

This is beautiful. Hahaha

[norty303]

My take on power is brutally simple: Use as little as yo can get away with, no matter what the promoter thinks.

Which brings us nicely full circle - do you buy the projector that has 'just enough' for that show, or the Ziggawatt option (and turn down power even though its not considered reliable in some quarters)?

[The_Doctor]

Oh, I just deleted that bit in an edit. I decided it wasn't a wise comment to make. I think all we can do is know what we have, and make sure we can control it, and know what is acceptable for safety. There should be many ways to do this. (This is one reason my driver design has a hardwired current limit, that's one way to prove a limit on diode current. It's not much but it does at least help prove that no software or careless hand on a knob can force more power than the datasheet claims. If nothing else it might reduce the cost of an expert witness sometime..)

EDIT:
Given the most crudely literal point, "You either have enough, or you don't", then 'enough' must mean too much, hence all we can do is as I said above, know what we have, know how to control, use more than one means to verify, etc.. Also, I prefer zooberwatts, more topspin.

[The_Doctor]

There's only so many times you can try to explain nicely before you have to bring out the attitude adjustment clue-by-four... But then your the "party pooper"/arrested for aggregated assault...

Does 'aggregated' mean you've done this before, repeatedly?

[norty303]

BTW, I hope you understand this is purely to stir up debate. Thats where the good stuff happens.
My own opinions (and actions sometimes even) sometimes differ from the points I make on threads.

In the real world, some people don't even bother turning down their ziggawatt lasers, OR using a lens when crowd scanning at 5ft, and some have even been lucky enough that their broken scanner DIDN'T come to rest on that tiny weeny 7mm spot on Raver Rachael's eyeball, and not required the extortionate costs of that expert witness.
I don't agree with that BTW, but its happening all the time.... (actually I don't know that, I can't even recall any incident where I've heard of a scanner stopping mid scan)

[The_Doctor]

BTW, I hope you understand this is purely to stir up debate. Thats where the good stuff happens.

Definitely. If it makes people get agile enough to juggle the various things that relate to this, it gets easier to see the context that lets us use multiple means to be safe. After all, if we really do NOT have enough for a show, we're S.O.L, no? So managing some excess safely is about all we can do.

[Galvonaut]

I'm finding this discussion (and the other) very useful

Keith

[sbk]

Imho, I believe (and I hope, for security reasons) that the race for power will not go forever, as did the race for GHz in CPU which stopped some years ago... There is some physics limits and they can't be beaten.

Also like the CPU there is now some work-around to gain processing power while stagnate at the same speed (more and more cores, etc), the lasers may do the same to gain brightness (more power density, tighter beams). But unfortunately the laser sources which feed our special use comes from a world were this beam density is very secondary, so this means power may increase to infinite but the power density will still remain at a maximum level, level that seems to be already close to its maximum, unless some new revolutionary technology emerges...

Some concerns now about having a very powerful projector and then limit the max power for smaller venues, think about color modulation resolution : with a 25W projector, every 1% software increase means a 250mW step increase !