Good evening!!
Following my posts from June earlier this year I set out my lock down project as a laser projector. (LaserBoy as I know you'll be lurking, I was the one asking about the source for your software)
Well it's here and im super happy with it!
I had to wait 2 months for the blasted PCBs to arrive from China, and then i blew two of the diodes of which I had to order another laser module from china which took another month.
I also wrote some code! I have built an ILDA reader and manipulator(less of the later currently). The code takes a file and converts to a .wav with a really easy to use. It's '''semi''' real-time, editing files on the fly and previewing them. The tripe quote marks are used as really it just stops playing computes the new file and starts playing and seeks. Comparing this method to some of the other pieces of software however does a good job for Audio DAC's, it however does fall down with larger files as the computations on a 50MB file is around 4 seconds but fine with smaller ones.
PCB problems still: originally I wanted to control a PWM for laser output with the arduino reading the analog voltage from the DAC, whilst I havent actually tried this, i carried out some tests before hand and its not close enough for a 48k audio sample. This needs to be spot on so the image doesn't become odd out of sync, to do this I will need to think of something different. Also one track is incorrect!
Another reason for the arduino was to create patterns from it via another on board SPI DAC, I accidentally connected the wrong pins and i couldn't really salvage it so I decided just to rip out the DAC and actually the laser is more impressive with a laptop instead.... Will I order another PCB? PCB design is actually not something Im super into any more and takes a lot of effort.
I could invest in an intelligent expensive show card but my miss' isn't happy as we are currently saving for our first property.... (mortgage accepted btw )
If anyone is looking for the software please get in contact, its not in a releasable state and theres loads more that could be added. The only annoying fact with this at the minute is that I'm having to generate the audio and save it to the HDD to play it, I haven't found any method so far to play it from RAM. (I can do it with 2 channel but not 6....) maybe a game engine developer might stumble across this and send me an email to trevor.boultwood@hotmail.co.uk
A question before you get to look up at the images - Any fancy trick into aligning the 3 lasers other than my hand? Bloody modules got shipped in a plastic bag!