Beginning laser projector build and first post, all advice appreciated

[Draco]

For some reason (I suspect the garbage radio shack brand probes, i miss my Pomona ones) when my meter is on the 300MA range it interests too much resistance and causes problems with some drivers, in one case the driver over voltaged by just a little bit and killed the diode under test, i need to make something with less series resistance or buy good meter leads, laser diodes are very sensitive for over voltage in either bias

[Draco]

the driver should be ok with a direct short since it's constant current , any other type of driver would be damaged, but say it's set to deliver 400ma and if you short it, it will try to deliver 400ma and just sit at that current, i have never damaged one doing this but the LD will act as a very low resistance when you hit it's threshold

[tej2795]

Thanks for all the support! I think I've lost the red so I'll be sticking to only green+blue for now. I'm already over my budget x3 so Im finishing up the project. Eventually I'll get to putting the enclosing around it with some cooling fans. Summer school has started for me and time is short.
I don't plan on leaving the laser community and I have a feeling I'll be starting a new project in a few months. If things turn out good Im planning on getting a professional setup and will definitely need some advice on that! I hope to be doing lights for a college organization which I'm a part of. People dig the light shows.


For now though, I've been "laserJ-ing" with a friend/dj/fello_organization_member for fun and just experimenting with the laser lights. I've gotten suprisingly good at playing different cues and atmospherics with the music. The beats per minute by tapping the space bar is a nice feature that quickshow has. I had trouble adjusting the brightness and rotation of the cues and abstracts because I was using the mouse pad on my laptop to control those effect. My fb3 has a spot to plug in dmx and midi controls and I'm thinking this is the answer to my problems. I Went to a music store and found a lot of really cool Keyboards with buttons and knobs on them. I also found some dmx lighting controllers that seemed like they might work. I want to get a controller that i can play live with but am just not sure where to start and the recommendations from the "light guys" at the store were not too helpful. Can anyone recommend me a good controller?

[frostypaw]

Hullo! Hope you didn't stop - you got so close.

As a controller have you seen the APC40 - though it gets more interesting as there's two versions. The software I'm using means I favour the MkI with it's crossfader and layout as it matches the APC perfectly



The MkII may be better for Quicktime but i've seen people use plain midi keyboards too. It's another problem with a hundred solutions I'm afraid. i've been heinously distracted by making actual shows, need to get back on the live thing

[Draco]

Now that's a sequencer? the APC40? i cant hope to afford one but i have always wanted to play with one