To the laser show software companies

[Pangolin]

There is quite a bit of a difference between rotating an entire galvo assembly with magnet, rotor, position sensor, and mirror as opposed to just a little mirror.

Yes, exactly, which is why I developed and patented one type of "Moving mirror optical scanner", where, substantially, the only thing that moves is a mirror.

In fact there are two small moving mirror optical scanners in the projector I already shown and discussed in the past:


The entire scanning system is very inexpensive to build -- around $25 for both axis. Although my mind can conceive these things, my own mechanical engineering abilities are limited (I am an electrical engineer by trade). So there are some remaining mechanical issues to work out with these scanners, before we can produce them in large volume. Plus, we have so many other things going on now... we have to prioritize our time expenditures.

Banthai, your post caught my eye for two reasons. Servos, and Wine. We should get together some time. I have quite a collection of both .

Best regards,

William Benner

[godfrey]

off topic, I know, I'm sorry - but I have a stupid question for Bill.


Bill - I'm assuming that is you in the photo above?


How long ago was the one below taken? I see the similarities in facial structure, ears and nose which is why I'm assuming it's you...what happened to the hair? It went from wavey light brown to straight and dark brown.

[buffo]

Godfrey;

The top picture isn't Bill. Not even close.

The bottom one is Bill, and though it may be an older picture, that's still the way he looks today.

Adam

[Banthai]

think more along the lines of Conan O'brians stunt double

i guess bill is the only person that can recreate the "German Disco Sketch" true to form in the pangolin office

Bill, certain love to chat about wine, that is if i can take the glass away from my mouth long enough

My work with servos has been as an engineer in the highspeed packaging industry, most of my experience comes from the University of Allen Bradley / Rockwell. designing & running control aplications in GML and Control Logix ... but gave all that up to run a restaurant ( which brings us back to the wine again )

al the best .... Karl

[Pangolin]

Hi all,

Yes, Godfrey, as Adam wrote, the top picture is not me. I actually don't know the person's name. That picture was taken at a tradeshow in 2002. The tradeshow was called "Global Shop" if memory serves... We can say that the company who put on the booth was, in some ways, representing a product that we worked on. It was a kind of trial-balloon if you will...

The bottom picture is me, and it was taken around 15 years ago. Now I am a bit heavier, and there is a lot of grey in my hair, although somehow the red seems to hide it well .

Best regards,

William Benner

[PackCat]

Hey Carmangary, just thought I would add a little something to consider. There is at least one company that I know, that sells shows that are great to watch. The price varies, however is usually around the $200 mark per show. Which is really good considering the quality and time it takes to make a great show. Lets look at this conservatively, lets say they are $50 a show. And, lets say that over the course of a year or two, you end up purchasing about 25 different shows. Which, really is not very many. Ok, so, you've already dropped $1250 in show material, plus whatever a simple playback device would cost. Per Bill's note, $100. So now its up to around $1350, again, a very conservative estimate. For this price you have 25 shows and a simple playback device. Well, for just a few bucks more, you get over 100 shows, plus 300,000 frames to make more shows with, the ability to play, edit and create new shows.

When is someone or company going to create a UI that doesn't look like it was written by a bored eighth grader or someone who still thinks DOS ACAD is cool? Isn't it time to move away from the 80's and the ugly interfaces, and have the software be more intuitive and anticipate your movements, instead of feeling like you are trying to do architectural 2-D drafting for engineering blueprints... think of it like using mouse clicks to aggregate spreadsheets instead of manually adding cells together. Hasn't anyone ever thought of using object-oriented programming?
Then I would be willing to spend real bucks on a software package.
just my two cents for now...

BTW, DOS died about 8 years ago... Isn't it about time to quit writing apps like it is still alive and thriving.

[JohnS]

When is someone or company going to create a UI that doesn't look like it was written by a bored eighth grader or someone who still thinks DOS ACAD is cool?

Are you that kind of App** user who NEEDS a smooth looking GUI to start working?
Welcome to the world of professional software, where it depends on functions and a working system instead of eye-candy.

John

[PackCat]

Are you that kind of App** user who NEEDS a smooth looking GUI to start working?
Welcome to the world of professional software, where it depends on functions and a working system instead of eye-candy.John

Only if I am going to pay several $thousand for it.

[carmangary]

Well, I am trying to make my UI in Spaghetti easy to use but I have a long way to go. My goal is to be able to minimize the number of popups and mouse clicks while creating a show. It gets old clicking this and that. But, at the same time I am trying to add new effects and features so it is a slow moving process. I was hoping people would provide feedback. I have received a few bug reports but that's about it. My website traffic is pretty good so I am curious to know how many people have actually made it through the install process and tried it. I need to put a couple shows up on the website for people to try out and see what it can do. Any volunteers to create one?

[flecom]

When is someone or company going to create a UI that doesn't look like it was written by a bored eighth grader or someone who still thinks DOS ACAD is cool? Isn't it time to move away from the 80's and the ugly interfaces, and have the software be more intuitive and anticipate your movements, instead of feeling like you are trying to do architectural 2-D drafting for engineering blueprints... think of it like using mouse clicks to aggregate spreadsheets instead of manually adding cells together. Hasn't anyone ever thought of using object-oriented programming?
Then I would be willing to spend real bucks on a software package.
just my two cents for now...

BTW, DOS died about 8 years ago... Isn't it about time to quit writing apps like it is still alive and thriving.

i would hate to tell you but most of the "professional" software i use (final cut pro hd, photoshop, dreamweaver, flash) all looks about the same as LD2000... some of them are a little more "refined" but im sure that apple/adobe have slightly larger software development teams than pangolin

i would love to see some intuitive software that anticipates my movements... please direct me to where i could find some