Appalled... Where is the Safety for the audience ?

[Laserpower]

I came across this video's on youtube from pangolin channel and looked forward on the laser companys youtube site + homepage, here was more video to view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNMDcCg4HrY - 3.37 sec - Straight Beams direct to the audience

If you look at the laser companys homepage, really don't hope it's the 15 watt RGB lasers they beam the audience with. It's pretty scary after 17 years, they don't have more knowledge about using of high-intensity class 4 lasers. But also no respect for the audience's eyes, and damage there will come after what i see on the following videos.

I love audience scanning my self, but only when it done safely. I don't see any safety lenses, or dimmed beams when it going to the audience. Why not use the BAM (Beam attenuation map ) now it's in the software with ???

More damage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBQ-cJxTtDE take a look around 15 sec in the video. Again Straight Beams direct to the audience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17MRK2q2yW8 - 47 sec again - Again Straight Beams direct to the audience

I'm just appalled by this. Don't know if bill did see this before he put it on there youtube channel ?

Poul

[The_Doctor]

It does look a bit dodgy, but are you sure no safetyscan lens was used? Put aside the idea of beam attenuation maps, those only work if you know exactly where a target is, you can't use them for people who move about. What you can do is use scanfail and divergence. If the divergence is enough to increase the beam's cross-sectional area to the point of safety, it might still look very narrow if seen from a moderate distance.

Example of maths for diameter increase by divergence.... Double the diameter is four times the area. Suppose you start with 1W, if you double diameter five times, area becomes 1024 times what it was, so 1W would be 1mW per unit area equal to original, so eye-safe. The doubling of diameter may mean that a beam 1mm wide is now 32 mm wide. At a few feet away you could resolve that, but could you do so by eye if you were seeing a view that put several human heads into an arc of only a few degrees? It may be harder still to do it in a video.

Now there may be a problem there, but you need to think about it to be sure, especially in the absence of data. For one thing, I can't see if a safetyscan lens is fitted to anything, but I'm fairly sure the aim is to diverge adequately, not to create a flashlight spread of light. Remember that maximum permissible exposure also takes duration into account, and those beams were moving, or pulsed for a short moment, and the slow-moving audience-scanned beams did look divergent to me. While a camera frame duration is likely 30 to 40 ms long, the laser pulse duration may be shorter, and we can't tell from the video. I think the PASS scanfail device resolves to 10 ms.

Nothing wrong with being vigilant because Bill's not a policeman, he just makes stuff people can be safe with if they use it right. Bad stuff does happen, there was a thread about some risible use of a Laserscope a month or two back, but some things may not be as dangerous as they look. That's part of any dramatic show.

[dzodzo]

i got puzzled by the math but doing some calculations i was able to understand the term "double the diameter 5 times" that would be d*2^5

[The_Doctor]

i got puzzled by the math but doing some calculations i was able to understand the term "double the diameter 5 times" that would be d*2^5

Yep, so area goes up like a*4^5. I noticed in one of the videos, some round splashes of light terminating in people's faces, and they looked like they were easily 50mm across. Now that might be an overexposure flare from a bright and narrow beam, but if so the centre of the impact point would go white with extreme overexposure in a camera and these stayed green. Which might mean they really ARE that wide, and the apparently narrower beam in the air could therefore be illusory.

I'm not going to draw a definitive conclusion from this, I just raise the point to show how hard it is to judge what we're seeing in the videos.

[edison]

Check this one video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBQ-cJxTtDE

Then go to 18 sec now that is what i call in your face!!!!!!!! Amazing that no one got blinded.

The beam is extremely thight so no safetylens used there that,s for sure............

[Laserpower]

Correct Edison. 15-18 sec in the video.

But there are no excuse in only mounting the laser projector in ~1.8 - 2 meters heigth, and a short distance from the audience.

>Doc hear what you are saying. :-)
But still, with safety lens. The MPE is so many times over the limit value, if they use a laser 15 watt RGB in that short distance. Then the green in the video is ~ 5 watts, running a single beam to the different Bounce mirrors. Still not approved in my eyes. Even if it's "only" a 3 watt rgb, depending on the camera as you also sayes. It's just not ok to beam a 1 watt green direct straight Beam to the audience.

I don't want to be a police here. But some people should not have accese to laser without the proper training. It's just my opinion.

[kecked]

amen u feel my pain. All they would have to have done is raise the beam a few feet in the air and nobody would have got hit in the face. The effect would have been nearly the same. We have to step up and spank these acts or we will all suffer. We also need to jump on ilda to go after the regulators to police these events better. A few busts and people will wise up. Until then this is going to keep going on. I have my little black dot reminder that follows me around all day everywhere I look from just a 35mw hene in the eye off axis while aligning a laser projector without goggles. Fortunately its way off to the right so its not there unless I look for it but still.

We are not the police but ILDA is own industry representative out there with the regulators. I have no idea what they have been up to but they did contribute a lot to the laser point conversation. Banning lasers is NOT the solution but maybe something like high power rocketry or ham radio licensing is appropriate. You have to demonstrate through testing you know what you are doing before you can buy anything over 5mw. All that would mean is sellers have to ask to see a copy of your license before they can sell to you. That's not that big a deal in the age of flat bed scanners and email.

[norty303]

That's not that big a deal in the age of flat bed scanners and email.

Are we living in the 19th century or something?

Paper copies of any certification as proof of entitlement are almost worthless in an age where counterfeiting official means of ID (passports, drivers licenses, etc) is easy.

It needs to be administrated and held in a central repository, but that will cost money.

And how will it work cross-territory?

[Laserpower]

Kecked. I can tell you we tryed for 5 years now to get thu to the government here in Denmark. And all the people we have talked with just wash there hands and saying it's the other department and we only goes in circles... No one in the government will take a responsibility to make some laws there are saying min. on class 3 and 4 need a license. After that there came Laws on the fireworks....
Like we have on fireworks here, after the acident in 2004 (see video on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4iNOguCNFQ)

But it like it always is. There must be a lot of people great harm before the government do something about it. And the problem is of course not diminished over the years with lots of cheap china junk products.
Or it needs to come on tv, that it's a problem, Then the politician can gets some votes... and do something about it. Ignoring... (and no i don't like to go to politics and do something about it :-) .-) )
So i think it's just a matter of time before we see the first eyes damage on somebody's audience. Because people don't handle the lasers with the causion and respect there there always is needed, when we are talking about laser...

[White-Light]

No one in the government will take a responsibility to make some laws there are saying min. on class 3 and 4 need a license.

There's no need for licensing, for owning a laser, that's just plainly over the top and would hit all hobbyists etc. All that's needed is for public events to properly licensed.

As for Brazil, they doesn't appear to be any enforcement of standards from what I've seen, anything goes.

As for Pangolin, it's not their job to police the world. They make software. If they are given a video showing their software in use, then of course they may want to show that to the world. You can never tell from a video how safe laser levels are as many video producers up the saturation levels to make lasers appear stronger and more impressive than they are in real life - search some of the videos for Awakenings and you'll see what I mean when you find one that isn't altered and the beams look quite weak, so it's not possible to tell definitively if anything untoward was occurring and even if it was over power, its not their job as software manufacturers to try and police it's usage. That's the job of local regulators.