The LaserBoy Thread

[lasermaster1977]

I'm pretty sure there has never been anything like this done for laser display before.

Respectfully, I beg to differ. It has, with many variations.

[james]

Respectfully, I beg to differ. It has, with many variations.

Have you downloaded the current version and checked out math.txt to see for yourself how it works?

[lasermaster1977]

Have you downloaded the current version and checked out math.txt to see for yourself how it works?

I just did. I think what you have done deserves praise, I'd like to see some image result examples as well.

What I'm saying is, that the end result has been emulated in electronic hardware going back to the late '70s and early '80s. I did a similar software solution using AppleSoft on an Apple II and IIe back then. Did it use your exact equations, no, but similar equational relationships that produced similar results using X1+X2 and Y2+Y1 in definable percentage sums (using integer harmonics or tune-able near harmonic relationships for selectable sine, triangle, square wave forms for X1,X2,Y2,Y1) with modulation terms for X1Y1 and X2Y2 using sine, triangle, square or ramp synchronized harmonic or tune-able near harmonic waveforms.

I built several mechanical harmonigraphs back then to study after seeing an amazing exhibit of them in a London, England museum in '77...I alluded to in an earlier post.

I certainly do not want or leave the impression that I'm trying to diminish your achievement.

[james]

I just did. I think what you have done deserves praise, I'd like to see some image result examples as well.

What I'm saying is, that the end result has been emulated in electronic hardware going back to the late '70s and early '80s. I did a similar software solution using AppleSoft on an Apple II and IIe back then. Did it use your exact equations, no, but similar equational relationships that produced similar results using X1+X2 and Y2+Y1 in definable percentage sums (using integer harmonics or tune-able near harmonic relationships for selectable sine, triangle, square wave forms for X1,X2,Y2,Y1) with modulation terms for X1Y1 and X2Y2 using sine, triangle, square or ramp synchronized harmonic or tune-able near harmonic waveforms.

I built several mechanical harmonigraphs back then to study after seeing an amazing exhibit of them in a London, England museum in '77...I alluded to in an earlier post.

I certainly do not want or leave the impression that I'm trying to diminish your achievement.

The whole idea sprang out of my wanting to implement a harmonograph that could be rendered from the LaserBoy menu that lets you render segments by entering coordinates and coefficients.

I already had all of the Spirograph like curves of rhodonea, epicycloid, epitrochoid, hypocyccliod, and hypotrochoid, plus the Lissajous curve. So I added the harmonograph to that set. I got tired of entering 16 different factors at the prompts pretty fast and it occurred to me that it would be much easier to get them all from a text file.

Since LaserBoy already knows how to read and write plain ASCII text (tables of vectors and colors etc...) I just added to that; a "math" section.

Most of the math functions expect integer values as input (as described on wiki), but I wrote them all to take double float. Then I figured out the idea of defining two states for a math curve and doing linear interpolation between the two states to create all the frames in between to animate the math forms.

As I fleshed out the capabilities of reading from a text file I found a lot of other nice features like being able to define one_rotation and one_period so that you don't need a calculator to figure out a number that represents 16 times around the unit circle (16 * 2pi) for example.

I also added some ideas of my own like 2D and 3D amplitude modulation and frequency modulation, which led me to add an offset factor to the pendulum class. And I defined a 3D harmonograph.

Have you opened math.txt in LaserBoy to see what frame set you get?

You can copy the whole thing and modify any of the math forms that are defined within it. There is only one example of each form.

To save some rendering time, you can set the file scope iterations and frames to 0. Each math form requires a definition of the values as well. If the values associated with each math form are set to -1, it means use the file scope values. So if those are 0, nothing is rendered. That way you can concentrate on just one form and set its iterations and frames to whatever you want and that is all that will be rendered.

[lasermaster1977]

Have you opened math.txt in LaserBoy to see what frame set you get?

Great overview, thanks James. My apologies, although I have downloaded LaserBoy and read your posts every so often, I have never installed or used it. Do you or anyone have any laser projector images of these imaging capabilities?

[james]

Great overview, thanks James. My apologies, although I have downloaded LaserBoy and read your posts every so often, I have never installed or used it. Do you or anyone have any laser projector images of these imaging capabilities?

There isn't really anything to install. Just unzip it to your hard drive and navigate to the LaserBoy folder. Edit the LaserBoy.bat file to the size in width and height in pixels of the window that it will open into. Save it and double click on that. The bat file calls LaserBoy.exe with command line arguments for size.

LaserBoy only reads files inside of its own folder and only from each sub folder of a specific type.

The file math.txt is in the txt sub folder.

Once LB is open hit escape after the ild file open report to get to the main menu.

Hit i to import a file.
4 for type txt.
Type the name math.txt (it will figure out what file you want by process of elimination. Since you only have one txt file, it will find it with just m as input.)
Hit enter.
Hit 1 to replace the frame set with the contents of math.txt and wait for it to render all the frames.

Use the left and right arrow keys to move through the frames or hit the ` or ~ key to show the frame set as an animation.

Ht any key to stop.

Each form is a solid color.

For better effect,

(from main)
Hit [Tab] to enter the value settings menu,
w for recolor palette span factor.
set it to 1 [Enter].
[Esc] back to main menu.
g frame to palette trans
up arrow 5 taps to the palette of pure hues.
C (capital) to set all frames to use this palette
^ (shift 6) to span the palette through the vertices of all frames
[Esc] back to main and hit
` ( or ~) to play the frame set

Enjoy!

I have not projected any of this on a laser projector yet. I have to get that set up in the place I'm living right now.

Soon.

[lasermaster1977]

There isn't really anything to install. Just unzip it to your hard drive and navigate to the LaserBoy folder.

I have not projected any of this on a laser projector yet. I have to get that set up in the place I'm living right now.

Soon.[/COLOR]

Good instructions, many thanks. I'm in the midst of modifying my old Apple II/IIe/IIgs floating point Basic software to work with a Koala pad instead of the Apple Graphics Tablet (OEM'd by Summagraphics for Apple back in the day). When I get this done I should have time to explore your software.

Thanks James

[buffo]

What I'm saying is, that the end result has been emulated in electronic hardware going back to the late '70s and early '80s.

This was the point I was trying to make in my post above.

I did not mean to take anything away from the digital solution that James has created. I merely meant to clarify that this can be done using analog circuitry, and indeed it *has* been done in some of the early analog laser abstract consoles.

I think what you have done deserves praise
I certainly do not want or leave the impression that I'm trying to diminish your achievement.

Seconded!

Adam

[james]

I put it out there because I have always loved computer generated art. That is the very reason I was attracted to computers in the first place back in the late 70s. As soon as I got my own computer, a Sinclair ZX81 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81 ) I wrote a program that drew Spirograph pictures. Then I got a Commodore 64 and did the same thing.

I guess you could say I've been orbiting the unit circle through countless iteration of 2pi for about 40 years now.

I wanted to make it possible for other people to explore the math curves in a way that was as easy as possible that required as little previous experience as possible that would yield results very fast.

I wanted to lay it out intelligently so that someone else could learn from it and have a lot of fun doing it.

Since LaserBoy can render frames to bitmaps of enormous proportions, it is possible to come up with some math forms that have millions of points (vectors) and render them to bitmap to be printed on high resolution printers.

[buffo]

As soon as I got my own computer, a Sinclair ZX81, I wrote a program that drew Spirograph pictures.

Wow - the forerunner to the Timex-Sinclair 1000! You're one of the few who had the original...

Admittedly there wasn't much difference - if any - between the two, but either way it's definitely old-school cool.

(My first machine was the Challenger 1P.)

Adam