Reviews of restored numbers

[Greg]

I'm not sure I follow what you mean about "a design pattern exists...", except you are also saying that the 6b is similar. My apologies for not having a clear understanding of the 6b or what you mean by "the half century difference in hardware choices". Do you mean "back then" compared to what you have at your disposal today?

But, wondering about "possibilities" is always a good thing!

I was referring to the Gang of Four Design Patterns, which is a set of solutions to common problems encountered in software design and development.

I'm saying that your system and my system appear to be cases of a problem being solved basically the same way. But that the Laserium system is completely different in terms of how it solves the same problem.

[lasermaster1977]

I was referring to the Gang of Four Design Patterns, which is a set of solutions to common problems encountered in software design and development.

I'm saying that your system and my system appear to be cases of a problem being solved basically the same way. But that the Laserium system is completely different in terms of how it solves the same problem.

Thank you for this clarification. The Gang of Four Design Patterns is far from my wheel house but love having my eyes opened! I wish this old brain had your programming insights and proficiencies.

I am intrigued that the 6b system is a different solution to the same problem.

I say go for it to controlling 4 Radiators with 4 galvo pairs! I for one am really impressed with Radiator's capabilities that Chris and his team brought to fruition.

[Greg]

Roj: Thanks for the posts. I expect midi + bela is a potent solutions option in many scenarios. Your guided intros provide a great way to get from nowhere to there.

My issue with midi is that the timing is not precise enough to port 352 data to. This inescapable truth resulted in much of LII's show catalog becoming obsolete when midi took over control of the beam kills.

The bela only system, such as I use, has opportunities for processing rigidly clocked to the delivery of the 44.1k audio frame, though the bela's DACs and ADCs operate at half that, 22050 fps. I think that is a huge difference in performance over midi.

The time between the notes relates the color to the scenes
A constant vogue of triumphs dislocate man, so it seems

lasermaster1977: I was learning the first steps of BASIC programming on the Commodore PET at the high school where my dad taught physics. At the same time you were performing planetarium shows with a 4 channel system of your own design. We both used 6502 assembly during the 1980s. It should not go unsaid that your ability to help others understand circuits involving op amps is legendary around here.

A quick uncertainty resolver for what I am using the term "6b" to refer to:

The LII system circa early 1980s included the phone booth sized cabinet with the vertically mounted ion laser, exciter, 1/4" four track reel to reel, a small open work surface, and atop all that the prism shaped projection head, with a turret on that. Beside the phone booth sat the dishwasher sized control desk, which held the card cages full of image generators, signal routing, and data decoding.

This massive system as it was around 1981 is what I refer to as the 6b.

The system I developed includes the 6b rebuild, which is the the panel I got from Brian connected to rebuilds from the original schematics of most of the original image generators. The other part of the system is the 6b emulator which is a small box that contains the bela devices and outputs to 4 ILDA projectors.

[swamidog]

I agree that The Radiator is a great controller. But wouldn't a laserist need 8 hands to control 4 of them in real time?
Roj

well, yes... and also no.

because you can drive radiators with external midi controllers, it's pretty easy to control multiple radiators with a single button press. here's an example using a stream deck:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVNfjh7IXeE

i can control three radiators (without musing midi), but it's a bit taxing on my very small brain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1q8FoQmvJU

however, two radiators for main abstracts and one radiator doing scan through effects is pretty easy and a lot of fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2-7UMv--Lg

[Greg]

I didn't say anything about wasted time. You saved me time and money with your tip about putting the ILDA connectors on the opposite side of the PCB. The Yes lyric was meant as a joke interpretation of the ethereal abstract as a statement about quantization resolution.

re: 6b platform details. The CYGN-A and CYGN-B (the analog and digital oscillator banks) did not receive any control signals from the data. Some image generator cards did. Thus, the two oscillator banks were the only image sources available on the console when the tape was not running.

[Greg]

The 4 Radiator suggestion was proposed as a thought experiment related to design patterns.

Anyone remember this brand of humor from the newsgroup days?

Kibo's dog and Schrodinger's cat
Side near each by the sycamore sat.
The dog said woof.
The cat said meow.
The dog looked over and he said Wow!
You're kind of there, and kind of not.
What a quantum thing to Spot.

Anyway, pardon the diversion. So my suggestion is really a question about n radiators talking to each other, which has been addressed in the previously posted links. I would venture that four radiators and one midi controller is the same pattern as four AppleDACs and one AppleII, or four belas and one PC.

[Greg]

Please all, speak of anything on this here junk drawer thread. Except of course spam, and one other thing. Some pals engage in a kind of "good-natured" perpetual insult slinging repartee, to what purpose I've never satisfactorily understood. I've always found that wearisome, and in a group setting It looks more like bullying, and it is the responsibility of the group to notice and re-direct bullying.

From an ancient but brilliant recording: Lou Gottlieb of The Limeliters:
I should caution you about our motto here at camp... (Audience laughs)
Clean mind, clean body, take your pick.

When young I thought he meant guitar pick, like he is telling his bandmates to start playing.

Roj, that is not how my system works, and that's not the reason for not using midi. A second big reason is in fact to not inflate a remarkably minimal hardware requirement. My shows are zero percent live except for a dowel and popsicle stick affair to move effects. The panel and joypot performance elements are recorded live in the studio.

What will you use for a timeline?

That is a good question. Some people, perhaps fairly, disdained James's Laser Girl software due to non-conformance with current UI expectations. My UI is worse, because it doesn't exist. There is a text file called render.cpp for each number, and that is what gets edited. A UI could be developed to render the render file of course.

[swamidog]

oh, no worries! you weren't being demeaning at all, and i am running out of hands.



honestly, i've never really seen a delay in working with midi.. and if there is one, to me the delay is much less important than it being consistent and predictable / compensatable.

Thank you for the correction, Chris.
Didn't intend to demean The Radiator's capabilities. On the other hand, you've supported my point regarding the use of midi. I believe that the proposed 4 Radiator suggestion was regarding the use of something other than midi.
Seems that you and I are reading the same playbook book, although I'm still a few chapters behind.
Yes, I've watched all of your excellent videos, including the Stream deck demo and found it very tempting. Hoping to develop multi-page 2D master imaging touchscreen GUI controls, for size, symmetry, color mixing, plus multi projector queue buttons using OSC.
My previous post regarding the need for 8 hands was based upon one of your 3 projector videos where you said that you're running out of hands.
Having said that, I still feel that Reaper could be a great DAW for your Radiators, except for the loss of PicEdit for frame editing and scan through blanking, as you rightly point out.
Full disclosure, I'm also using PicEdit for creating abstract ILD frames, then manipulating them with synth waveforms and midi, via Reaper. Not interested in animated wireframe sequences.
Every synth and DAW has unique bells and whistles, pros and con, eh.
Of course, I also fully understand that while already being the undeniable LSX guru, you wouldn't want to make such a dramatic change to your workflow.
Personally, having been an old school laserist during the pre-midi DAW analog controller era, I simply couldn't cozy up to LSX and had a bees nest of unrealized desires still buzzing around inside my head, which drove me to have a go for either success or closure.
So far, I'm enjoying the ride, although the 3 year learning curve from scratch has been a frustrating journey. Just ordering my 2nd PCB and working on firmware upgrades. It is an endless road, isn't it?
Always appreciative of your pearls of wisdom. Namaste'.
I'll just crawl back into my cave, now.
BR
😎

[lasermaster1977]

Please all, speak of anything on this here junk drawer thread. Except of course spam, and one other thing. Some pals engage in a kind of "good-natured" perpetual insult slinging repartee, to what purpose I've never satisfactorily understood. I've always found that wearisome, and in a group setting It looks more like bullying, and it is the responsibility of the group to notice and re-direct bullying.

From an ancient but brilliant recording: Lou Gottlieb of The Limeliters:
I should caution you about our motto here at camp... (Audience laughs)
Clean mind, clean body, take your pick.

When young I thought he meant guitar pick, like he is telling his bandmates to start playing.

Roj, that is not how my system works, and that's not the reason for not using midi. A second big reason is in fact to not inflate a remarkably minimal hardware requirement. My shows are zero percent live except for a dowel and popsicle stick affair to move effects. The panel and joypot performance elements are recorded live in the studio.



That is a good question. Some people, perhaps fairly, disdained James's Laser Girl software due to non-conformance with current UI expectations. My UI is worse, because it doesn't exist. There is a text file called render.cpp for each number, and that is what gets edited. A UI could be developed to render the render file of course.

One could add a RTC to the Beagle Bone Black (BBB) with this as an I2C device: https://learn.adafruit.com/adding-a-...wiring-the-rtc
Although I don't get the impression this device is appropriate compared to other RTC chips that offer more versatility. Something comparable to the old Dallas Semiconductor DS1287 from back in the old days of RTCs.

But to make it useful for laser timeline programming an RTC, in addition to keeping very accurate time, it needs to be programmed to generate an output pulse at a regular, predefined time interval which should correspond to smallest measure of time used in a laser programmed timeline. The RTC generate time reference pulse would be used in conjunction with BBB's ability to handle up to 128 IRQ requests. (what? 128? this is Nirvana!)

On a side note, I wonder why I'm not getting PLF notices when comments are added in these forum topics now?

[Greg]

One could add a RTC to the Beagle Bone Black (BBB) with this as an I2C device: https://learn.adafruit.com/adding-a-...wiring-the-rtc
Although I don't get the impression this device is appropriate compared to other RTC chips that offer more versatility. Something comparable to the old Dallas Semiconductor DS1287 from back in the old days of RTCs.

But to make it useful for laser timeline programming an RTC, in addition to keeping very accurate time, it needs to be programmed to generate an output pulse at a regular, predefined time interval which should correspond to smallest measure of time used in a laser programmed timeline. The RTC generate time reference pulse would be used in conjunction with BBB's ability to handle up to 128 IRQ requests. (what? 128? this is Nirvana!)

On a side note, I wonder why I'm not getting PLF notices when comments are added in these forum topics now?

Do I understand correctly that this discussion is about being able to control a bela based laser system through the use of a gui? If so, then I assume the way to go is through the use of the bela GUI library.

https://learn.bela.io/the-ide/crafting-guis/