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Thread: Low cost/entry level ilda controllers

  1. #21
    mixedgas's Avatar
    mixedgas is offline Creaky Old Award Winning Bastard Technologist
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    I have Pangolin Quickshow and Beyond too , and it is sweet.

    Just don't buy a ISHOW unless you want to suffer great pain. 95% of people here could agree on that. Besides 64 bit drivers have never arrived for it.

    Steve
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  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by james View Post
    Just trying to make a point.

    There are two different ways to think about laser control signals.

    One is that they are somehow magic and require specialized proprietary hardware and software and one system is not at all compatible with another.

    The other is that ultimately it's all the same thing in the end. The output of any proprietary laser DAC can be digitally recorded as multichannel wave and then it is no longer stuck in any one particular system.

    With that in mind, you can just skip the middle part and render digital directly to an audio device.

    There are literally thousands of hardware devices and software apps that are engineered for digital audio and there always will be innovations and improvements in that field.

    There are millions of times more consumers of digital audio products than there are laserists.

    Do the math.
    Soundcards DACS are OK but you kind of stuck with specific point rates and are at the mercy of whoever wrote the driver you are using and the OS that controls it. I think most people who tried out the soundcard DACs 10 years ago when they were the cheap way out knows the pain of getting drivers that worked correctly. Now you can get a Helios DAC at around the same price and you don't have to do any soldering or deal with finding drivers or weird enclosures. I really wish there was a good soundcard DAC solution that was cheap, but there isn't.

  3. #23
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    Do you own and use a modified sound device?

    The C Media usb chip has been a good solution since it came out in 08 or so. There are also some very good options for internal sound cards.

    It might take a bit of tinkering to get it setup at the start but once you get it, it's just fine.
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  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by james View Post
    Do you own and use a modified sound device?

    The C Media usb chip has been a good solution since it came out in 08 or so. There are also some very good options for internal sound cards.

    It might take a bit of tinkering to get it setup at the start but once you get it, it's just fine.
    Yes, but it doesn't work now, after accidentally rolling over it with my chair. I added support in Spaghetti for it with my own driver (not EzAudDac). It works really well once the sound card drivers are sorted out in Windows. There is even a built in UI to change the audio channels to map however you have it set up.

  5. #25
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    So the moral of this story is that modified sound cards are not reliable because they're prone to getting rolled over by a chair.

    You got me. That's definitely a deal breaker.

    You know I could make one for you. Right?
    Last edited by james; 03-03-2021 at 17:21.
    Creator of LaserBoy!
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    Download LaserBoy!
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    All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by james View Post
    So the moral of this story is that modified sound cards are not reliable because they're prone to getting rolled over by a chair.

    You got me. That's definitely a deal breaker.

    You know I could make one for you. Right?
    I appreciate it but I think I have around 15 DACs laying around. I need to get rid of most of this stuff.
    I still haven't even taken the 20K scanners I won at my first SELEM out of the bag, yet.

  7. #27
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    So does Spaghetti currently support all that stuff you mentioned about sound cards?

    If not, it should. It would make it just that much more appealing to people who want to explore the art of laser display on a budget.
    Creator of LaserBoy!
    LaserBoy is free and runs in Windows, MacOS and Linux (including Raspberry Pi!).
    Download LaserBoy!
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    All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.

  8. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by JohnYayas View Post
    I appreciate it but I think I have around 15 DACs laying around. I need to get rid of most of this stuff.
    I still haven't even taken the 20K scanners I won at my first SELEM out of the bag, yet.
    I'd be thrilled to take those 20K scanners off your hands.

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by james View Post
    So does Spaghetti currently support all that stuff you mentioned about sound cards?

    If not, it should. It would make it just that much more appealing to people who want to explore the art of laser display on a budget.
    The demand for it hasn't been there in a long time, honestly. You should make LaserBoy! do all that stuff since that is your domain. How hard is it to add a modern UI and make it so people can use it live?

  10. #30
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    I've thought about writing a specialized wave player that would allow you to change parameters as it was playing like x & y gain and offset, color gain, color to scanner delay, channel swapping, etc. But that would be a totally separate app. Having live output from LaserBoy would be kind of weird because LB lets you work with vector art that is not at all optimized for display. So every screen would have to go into a buffer and be optimized before it could go to the scanners and that would not really show you anything important because the whole frame set would still need to be optimized before it could be exported as a wave.

    Right now I'm working on the animated math scripting language. I'm going to call it "LaserBoy Liquid Math". Every time I think I have it pretty much figured out, I try to make some art with it and I discover new features to add. I just got through totally rearranging the syntax of the whole thing so it is so much easier to read, write and understand.
    Creator of LaserBoy!
    LaserBoy is free and runs in Windows, MacOS and Linux (including Raspberry Pi!).
    Download LaserBoy!
    YouTube Tutorials
    Ask me about my LaserBoy Correction Amp Kit for sale!
    All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.

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