Announcing ILDAC-32 - an ESP-32 based DAC for ILDA projectors

[buffo]

-- DC modified 8 channel sound card (modified how?)

The modification to the sound device is just to tack wires on the DAC side of the DC blocking caps.
I suspect your device has something similar to the LaserBoy Correction Amp.

Since Hank's device did not start with a sound card, there are no DC blocking capacitors to bypass.

Likewise, the sound card DAC "correction amp" is necessary to boost the output of the sound card's amplifier up to the voltage levels expected by the projector.
But since Hank's device did not start with a sound card, his design doesn't need two separate amplifiers in series like you'd have with a traditional sound card DAC + a correction amp.

In the ILDAC-32, the output from the DAC chips is sent directly to a differential amplifier output stage that drives X and Y.

In theory the LaserBoy Correction Amp (or the AudioLaze, for that matter) could be re-designed to pick off the signals directly from the DAC chips on the sound card (before the final output stage), so that the "correction amp" would be the only amp in the chain. But soldering to those points on the sound card would likely be more trouble than it's worth.

To clarify: I'm not implying that there's anything wrong with having two amps in series. It's just not necessary for Hank's design.

Adam

[james]

If you only started with this assertion, I think the conversation would have gone a lot better! Thanks for your input and feedback.

Let's be fair about this. I started by asking you if you know anything about what LB can do.

Then things got weird.

[buffo]

Let's be fair about this.

Yes, let's be fair. Promise? OK then...

I started by asking you if you know anything about what LB can do.
Then things got weird.

You asked if Hank knew what Laserboy can do, and he answered you: Yes, he knows.

The weird part is you asking someone who has been here for a decade if they know what Laserboy can do. Because anyone who has spent more than a year or two here on the forum already knows what Laserboy can do, because you *frequently* try to steer conversations towards your software. Just as you tried to do again in the conversation above.

OK, fine - you received your answer - he knows what it can do. Leave it at that and move on. (That would be the fair thing to do, since this thread is not about you.)

But no, you had to keep pushing: "All you need to run Laserboy is a Raspberry Pi, and a sound card DAC, and a correction amp..." Despite the fact that this is already more hardware than the stand-alone ILDAC-32 (which fits inside a Raspberry Pi case).

And it just went downhill from there. ("We're just discussing the things that go on in the space between my ears...") No, that's what YOU were doing. The rest of us were discussing Hank's creation and the latest improvements that he's come up with, right up until you decided that the discussion needed revolve around you and Laserboy instead.

Give it a rest already. *You* are making things weird by trying to steer the topic away from Hanks creation and towards your own. That's impolite, immature, and especially WEIRD, considering that you are a grown-ass man who shouldn't need to be reminded of these things.

Adam

[dchammonds]

If I had an ild file and a stereo music file, would ILDAC-32 be able to play both at the same time?

[HankLloydRight]

If I had an ild file and a stereo music file, would ILDAC-32 be able to play both at the same time?

Not at this time, but it's not impossible. The problem I've run into, especially with "The Riddle" show posted here PL, is timing the frames.
Some frames have lots of points, and some have just a few points and since the ILDA points at the scan rate set for a projector, some frames take longer than others to render.
If the frames were all the same size, I could just calculate how long to play each frame to match the length of the audio file.
So how I'd sync ILDA files with a music file, I have no idea.
I'd suggest finding a way to merge the ILDA file synced to an audio track into a WAV file and then play that.

[HankLloydRight]

Ok, I really wasn't going to reply, but now that buffo did (thanks!) I'll add a couple of my own thoughts.

In addition to what buffo said about changing the conversation, you constantly added comments that made me think you either didn't take the time, or fundemetnally didn't understand what I have done here. I think I've explained it several times in this thread. But you made comments like this that are phenomenally irrelevant to ILDAC-32:

If you have written all the code to convert ILDA to wav with optimization and all that, you should consider including LaserBoy wave formatting data. It's some stuff added to the wav header and binary markers in the color channels, so a wav can be opened in LB or any other app that knows what to look for and you get your frames back with proper time / color alignment. This makes wav a fully functional storage format for laser vector art.

I explained that nothing I'm doing has any relevence to this. I'm not converting ILDA to WAV, and if you understood what my simple device does, you wouldn't go off on making it all about Laserboy (again)!

I suspect your device has something similar to the LaserBoy Correction Amp. It adds a fixed offset null voltage to the output of every DAC channel and gives it enough gain to drive a laser projector.

Buffo explained why this makes no sense.

If you are reading directly from ILDA and sending the values to the DAC, how are you normalizing it or optimizing it for timed display?

Again, trying to steer the conversation to what LB can do. I already explained that ILDAC-32 is simply a content player. Why are you still talking about optimization and timed displays?

I do find it interesting that using the wav file is cool, as long as it isn't associated with LaserBoy in any way.

What in the world does this mean (I'm asking you for the second time)?

I remember a lot of negativity when I was promoting that idea going on 2 decades ago.

Ok, again it's about you and how you were treated. No wonder nobody takes you seriously.

If you want to put together a collection of frame sets that all look consistent and as good as possible on any given projector, having the ability to optimize all of it with the same parameters is quite useful. It doesn't matter if it's ilda or wave.

The dchammonds then asked: "What does this have to do with the ILDAC-32?"

You responded:

It plays both ilda and wav files and anyone who gets one would find a whole lot of utility in LB for making files for it that look really good.

Did anyone ask for this? Has anyone said that ILDA or WAV files on ILDAC-32 need optimizations or normalizations? Once again you're pushing LB, like you do in pretty much every other thread on PL. In fact I've run thousands of ILDA files from the PL FTP repository as well as hundreds of WAV files through ILDAC-32-WAV and they all look great to me -- and on different projectors.

And I'd like to give you one bit of constructive feedback on LaserBoy. I posted a screenshot in Post #46. If you want people to take your software seriously, ditch the rainbow text colors on the main screen. It's nearly impossible to read the darker colors, and it looks like it was written by a high-school student in MS-DOS in the 80's. And if you want people to be able to use it, take the core functionality and put a user-friendly GUI on top of it -- there are ways to do this cross-platform, too. Or even better yet, take the core conversion code you're already written, put it up on a webserver, and allow people to do all the conversions online. You can even use the web based ILDA file viewer I built: https://ildac32.com/render/ to display the processed output. If you do that, I think you'd see lots of people using your software.

[dchammonds]

Not at this time, but it's not impossible. The problem I've run into, especially with "The Riddle" show posted here PL, is timing the frames.
Some frames have lots of points, and some have just a few points and since the ILDA points at the scan rate set for a projector, some frames take longer than others to render.
If the frames were all the same size, I could just calculate how long to play each frame to match the length of the audio file.
So how I'd sync ILDA files with a music file, I have no idea.
I'd suggest finding a way to merge the ILDA file synced to an audio track into a WAV file and then play that.

What I was thinking about is to clock the ild at a rate so it matches the length of the music file. You're not going to get much in the way of beat synchronization,
but not all shows depend on that. I think Geetone did some material that way.

[HankLloydRight]

What I was thinking about is to clock the ild at a rate so it matches the length of the music file. .

I tried exactly that with "The Riddle". But since the frames vary in number of points and therefore how long they take to render, I wasn't able to come up with an algorithm that did that effectively.

I'm totally open to suggestions on how to do this.

[dchammonds]

I tried exactly that with "The Riddle". But since the frames vary in number of points and therefore how long they take to render, I wasn't able to come up with an algorithm that did that effectively.

I'm totally open to suggestions on how to do this.

Just prescan the ild file to find the total number of points for all the frames and divide accordingly, and if you're lucky the calculated scan rate might
just fall in the 12-30k range. Again, this would only be appropriate for select shows.

[Laser Wizardry]

We're chatting about stuff that goes on in the space between my ears.

That will be a rather short chat then won't it.

LOL this is my first post in like a decade, I broke my silence to point out that you are still a jackass, and still trying to take over other people's threads with shameful self promotion for your own worthless software. According to your posts, Laserboy can do just about anything and everything a laserist could ever need it to. yeah right. LOL. Does it still have that stupid psychedelic 80's game like text interface? This thread is not about you or your software.

This thread is about an awesome product that will let people like myself play back our old ADAT shows that are stored as wave files. You seem to be on a constant mission to make yourself look dumb. Keep it up, it may be all you are good at.