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Thread: Halloween display 2021

  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2014
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    Connecticut
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    Default Halloween display 2021

    I recycled my Halloween show from our previous house in 2018..

    Same show, different house! There is some scaffolding there for some window repairs we're having done, but so far, it's been a big hit. The laser is across the street on a neighbor's deck. This was all very last minute (like, today) so I didn't have time for sound effects or setting up my fog machine. Next year though I'll have lots more.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3KrkTW0zXM

    At one point a little boy said twice very loudly "LIGHT TRAVELS IN A STRAIGHT LINE!!"

    side note: This is the projector that SaltyRobot built for me out of a Laserworld box (I bought from Francis at FLEM), some higher output diodes I bought, and the scanners and x-laser drivers I won as a SELEM door prize a few years back.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
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    Charleston, SC
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    Quote Originally Posted by HankLloydRight View Post
    I recycled my Halloween show from our previous house in 2018.
    Looking Good, Hank!

    When I first watched the video, I thought you had a scrim and the little bit of distortion seen in the image was caused by the scaffolding. But then I couldn't figure out how you had the scrim suspended ABOVE the top of the scaffold.

    Once I realized you were projecting right onto the house (and part of the roof), I was surprised that the image was viewable at all. I would have thought that all the angles and such on the front of the house would have totally messed with the image. I mean, yeah, it did mess it up a little, but the animations are still plainly viewable, which surprised me.

    Yet another example of how we are often times our own worst critics; we think everything has to be perfect, but the general public's reaction is always: "Wow, cool laser!" and they hardly ever seem to notice the little things.

    Nice of you to set this up for the neighborhood kids, dude.

    At one point a little boy said twice very loudly "LIGHT TRAVELS IN A STRAIGHT LINE!!"
    Ah Ha! That's a future PL member right there! (Quick, get his email address...)

    Adam

  3. #3
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    May 2014
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    Quote Originally Posted by buffo View Post
    Once I realized you were projecting right onto the house (and part of the roof), I was surprised that the image was viewable at all. I would have thought that all the angles and such on the front of the house would have totally messed with the image. I mean, yeah, it did mess it up a little, but the animations are still plainly viewable, which surprised me.
    I actually started the afternoon with hanging a large black screen on the scaffolding (see below). But when night fell, the lasers just didn't look that good, and the projected images were limited to just that black square. When aligning the graphics, I moved it over to the walls of the house, and it looked so much better, and the added bonus was that I could expand the size to cover a much larger area.

    So right before the kids came around, I had to go up and remove the black screen I just spent an hour putting up! We had used the same black screen for a laser show at a friends house, but mounted flat against the side of the house and pulled taught, and it looked great. But for last night, I didn't want to start climbing up to the top of the scaffolding to secure the screen better.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Quote Originally Posted by buffo View Post
    Yet another example of how we are often times our own worst critics; we think everything has to be perfect, but the general public's reaction is always: "Wow, cool laser!" and they hardly ever seem to notice the little things.
    Exactly. Sure, I wish the scaffolding wasn't there and the images looked better, but to everyone else, it was freaking cool! I had also set up the alphalite box with a lumia wheel to flood the house with lumia, but projected that far, it was super dim, so I killed that idea. Also, in the middle of the evening, it started to drizzle just a little bit, which made the beams visible with tiny water droplets, and that looked super cool.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Location
    Colorado USA
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    Default Very Cool Indeed...

    I recycled my Halloween show from our previous house in 2018..
    Very nice results for sure. I've been wanting to do the same for XMas with some of my old shows but don't have a neighbor I would trust.
    ________________________________
    Everything depends on everything else

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by lasermaster1977 View Post
    I've been wanting to do the same for XMas with some of my old shows but don't have a neighbor I would trust.
    Is you house positioned very close to the street? If not, you might have enough throw from the edge of your front lawn. Just mount your laser on a tripod out near the sidewalk (up high, of course). Then you don't need to shoot across the street from a neighbor's house.

    On the other hand, if your front lawn isn't long enough to give you a decent throw length, you could always install a disco-scan lens (or similar) on the projector to widen your scan angle.

    I've also seen people set their projector on the floor at the back of their garage, open the garage door, and hang a sheet across the opening. Basically they are rear-projecting their graphics onto the sheet. With a typical garage, you only have about a 21ft throw to the opening, but that opening is only ~ 7 ft high, so that's roughly 19 degrees for your scan angle. Not too bad for most graphics content...

    Adam

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