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Thread: LaserBoy is now Open Source

  1. #1
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    Default LaserBoy is now Open Source

    Look for ezfb version 10.00 here:
    http://freshmeat.net/

    Released 03-21-2008

    If you follow their links to my site, I get more manna or chi or something.
    I just submitted the new release, so it won't appear until they review it.

    Well, here it is! This is the full version of LaserBoy in C++ source code!
    It compiles and runs on just about any Linux machine running a frame buffer
    enabled kernel. That would include a session of Knoppix running in a
    VirtualPC on a Windows Machine!

    LaserBoy is a full featured laser vector art workstation application capable
    of reading, drawing, generating, animating, manipulating, writing, etc...
    ILDA, DXF, Bitmap, palette, C++, and WAVE files.

    Most importantly, LaserBoy generates standard multi-channel wave files,
    which, when played from an appropriate sound device (in any OS) will produce
    the complex signals necessary to directly drive a standard RGB ILDA laser
    projection system.

    It is a hardware independent, industry standard file format, 24-bit color,
    open source software solution for laser projection.

    I plan to continue to add to this project, as time permits. The next big
    step is to port it to SDL (http://www.libsdl.org/) so that it may run an
    just about any OS.

    If you are interested in this project, please feel free to contact me
    directly. Contact information is on my website.

    James Lehman
    VP / CTO
    Extra Stimulus Inc.

  2. #2
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    Thumbs up

    Greetings and salutations. It has been a while since you have been around.

    I have been meaning to try your creation but I am Linux challenged. It there any way you could post a small step by step, and or checklist for everything needed beyond a projector to get a LaserBoy set up going?
    Love, peace, and grease,

    allthat... aka: aaron@pangolin

  3. #3
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    Default

    Glad to see you are still in action James. Since we last spoke on the phone when I was beta testing your software I have created my own laser show software called Spaghetti. It is a lot different than yours, though. While yours deals mostly with creating frames, mine deals mostly with putting those frames on a timeline. Mine is not open source but it is free.

  4. #4
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    Default How to get LaserBoy going on your Windows PC

    0. Check your system's compatibility.
    This document assumes that you are running a PC with MS Windows 2000 Pro or MS Windows XP. It is also required that this computer has an Ethernet card and is on a TCI/IP network that provides DHCP service. You must set up this computer to be on a Microsoft workgroup, know the name of this computer and the administrator password or be a user with administrator privileges. If you have a router and this computer gets its IP address information automatically when it starts up, then you are ready to go!

    1. Get the stuff you need.
    a. Knoppix
    b. MS Virtual PC 2004
    c. PuTTY
    d. LaserBoy

    New info: VirtualPC 2007 is available but works only in XP.


    a. Knoppix
    http://knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

    Get the CD iso image called:
    KNOPPIX_V5.0.1CD-2006-06-01-EN.iso

    New info: Knoppix 5.1.1 is now available.

    http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/knopp...6-06-01-EN.iso

    You do not need to make a CD of this image, but you can if you want. It's really neat! Just make sure the iso image is on your Window's hard drive.

    b. MS Virtual PC 2004
    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en
    Save the installation file to your hard drive and install it.

    c. PuTTY
    http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
    http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/.../x86/putty.exe
    Save the installation file to your hard drive and install it.

    d. LaserBoy
    Unzip laserboy.zip (or laserboy_demo.zip) on the root of your drive. It will make a folder called laserboy. In this folder will be a number of Linux executable files (only laserboy for the demo). These are the applications. There is also a set of folders to contain the data that is read or written by the LaserBoy applications. Some of these folders are empty.

    New info: Put the source code in a folder called laserboy. You can make it from Knoppix.

    2. Set it up.
    Share this new laserboy directory on your network with user name and password protection. Open the drive that contains the laserboy directory that came from unzipping laserboy.zip. Right click on the laserboy folder and choose Sharing.... Select "Share this folder". It's name should already be laserboy. Click on the Permissions button. Highlight the word Everyone in the list and remove it. Click Add... Find your own user name in the list and add it. In the permissions section, just below where you added your name, check all of the boxes by checking the first "full control" box. Click OK. Click OK. Now the icon of your laserboy folder should have a little hand under it like it is being served.

    Run Virtual PC and create a new virtual machine. Name it Knoppix. Choose Other for OS type. Don't worry about the memory settings. You can always adjust this later. Since you have never made a virtual machine before, you will need a "new virtual hard disk". But don't worry. Knoppix doesn't need a hard disk of its own. It boots from either a CD or an iso image of a CD. Once you get this virtual machine set up, you can change the setting to no hard drive at all. Finish creating the new virtual machine. Once it is finished, you can select it and take a look at its settings. This is where you can adjust these things.

    Knoppix (a kind of Linux), by default, requires no real hard drive storage at all. It creates a UNIX like file system mostly in the available system RAM. The iso image of Knoppix is mounted read-only so it can not be changed or currupted. Every time you want to boot up your new vitual Knoppix machine you have to do this stuff!

    a. start the virtual machine
    b. choose its display resolution
    c. start its secure shell terminal server
    d. set its root password
    e. show its IP address
    f. open a Windows PuTTY session into it
    g. mount the Windows shared folder
    New info: make the code!
    h. rock-n-roll

    If you "start" the new virtual machine, it will show you a BIOS start up screen. By default, it will try to boot from the CD drive. If there is a Knoppix CD in the drive, it will boot. Otherwise, you can click on "CD" in the menu bar of the virtual machine's window and choose "Capture ISO Image...". Browse to the iso image of Knoppix that you saved on your hard drive and select it. Then Click on the "Action" item in the menu bar and send the virtual machine a ctrl-alt-del signal to reboot it. This time it should come up to the Knoppix prompt, where you can specify how you want Knoppix to boot.

    If you click into the window that contains your new virtual machine it will capture both your keyboard and your mouse. Don't panic! The right "Alt" key on your keyboard will release your terminal devices and allow you to return to controlling your real computer in Windows.

    Since LaserBoy is a console application that takes over the whole display of the Linux machine on which it is running, you probably don't want to boot up into the X windowing system. So, at the prompt, type one of the following boot options:

    fb800x600 3
    fb1024x768 3
    fb1280x1024 3

    The first part of the boot directive means "frame-buffer-at-resolution". There are no spaces in this segment of text. The following digit 3, after the space, tells Linux to boot to run level 3, which is the command prompt. The X windowing system is run level 5. If you boot to a prompt and you later want to run X, type the command "startx".

    If you are in X and you want to return to the command prompt, click into the VirtualPC window running Knoppix and then issue a Ctrl-Alt-BackSpace and hit return a few times to see the prompt... or... Issue a

    root@tty1[/]# telinit 3

    command and see where that gets you.

    The size of the window frame that holds the virtual machine will change to whatever screen resolution you chose from above. You should also see a little penguin, Tux, in the upper left corner of the screen. This means that all is well and the Linux kernel is booting up with an active frame buffer. Since Knoppix is a Live CD it boots into a system that it knows nothing about; every time! So it takes a bit longer than booting up an OS that comes from a regular hard drive installation. Be patient. Enjoy all the pretty colored text. Eventually, you will get a cyan prompt at the bottom of the virtual machine window that looks like this:

    root@tty1[/]#

    If you have never seen this before, welcome to the wonderful world of Linux!

    Start the ssh secure terminal server. Type "sshstart" at the prompt and hit enter.

    root@tty1[/]# sshstart

    It will create the encryption keys and get things going and then it will ask you for a password for the user knoppix. Go ahead and enter lowercase x for the password. the user knoppix is not important because you must be the user root to run applications that communicate directly with the frame buffer. So, you should also set the password for the user root. Right now, at this prompt, you are root. Change the password by typing the command "passwd" at the prompt and hit enter.

    root@tty1[/]# passwd

    Again, make it lowercase x.

    Now you need to know the IP address that this machine got from your DHCP server. Type "ifconfig" and hit enter.

    root@tty1[/]# ifconfig

    You should see two blocks of text. The first one is for "eth0". This is the Ethernet device that connects to other computers on your network.

    root@tty1[/]# ifconfig
    eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:22:33:44:55
    inet addr:192.168.0.12 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

    The first line is the hardware (MAC) address of the device and the second line is the inet addr: That's the number you want; in this case, 192.168.0.12.

    Now you can hit the right Alt key and get out of the virtual machine. At this point, you can think of this as nothing more than a display server. You don't need to interact with it directly anymore. All contact with this virtual computer can now be through it's network services. If your real Windows computer is set up to display on two monitors, then move this Virtual PC window to the other monitor.

    Run PuTTY. The "Default Settings" are OK and they will work, but you might want to tweak the font or other things. Load the default settings. In the Hostname (or IP address) field, type the IP address of the virtual machine that you got from issuing the ifconfig command above. Type knoppix in the Saved Sessions text box and click the Save button. Whenever you load this session and make changes to it you have to save it again or else your changes will be lost. You may find that the IP address of the virtual machine changes over time. Click the Open button and log in as the user root at the prompt with the password x.

    Welcome to Knoppix via secure shell!

    Now you need to create a directory in the Knoppix file system and mount the laserboy network shared directory to it.

    First make the directory called laserboy at the root of the UNIX like file system. Note the leading slash.

    root@0[~]# mkdir /laserboy

    Then mount the network share onto it.

    root@0[~]# mount -t smbfs -o username=user_name //computer_name/laserboy /laserboy

    Replace user_name and computer_name with your real values. Enter the password assiciated with user_name at the prompt and if all goes well it won't do anything at all except return your command prompt.

    You might note that "-t smbfs" means mount type server-message-block-file-system. The -o means with options. If you didn't override the default behaviour of mount, you would be trying to connect to the Windows share as root. Enter this:

    root@0[~]# whoami

    See!

    Sometimes I have problems with the network mount timing out and reporting a bogus IP address. So, If this happens to you, try this: Look up your Windows machine IP by running cmd (in Windows) and typing the command...

    c:\ ipconfig

    Hit return. This is much like ifconfig in Linux. You'll see your Windows IP address. Use this information instead of your Windows Workgroup computer name like this:

    root@0[~]# mount -t smbfs -o username=user_name //192.168.0.4/laserboy /laserboy

    Where 192.168.0.4 is replaced by the real IP of your Windows machine.

    Now put your prompt into the same working directory as the LaserBoy application set

    root@0[~]# cd /laserboy

    Do an ls to be sure! (lower case LS)

    root@0[~]# ls -al

    You should see the stuff that is in the laserboy directory located on your Windows hard drive.

    ............................................
    New info: you should see the folder full of code for ezfb. Type

    root@0[~]# cd ezfb

    root@0[~]# ls -al

    This is only part of the code. This is what puts the picture on the screen.

    root@0[~]# make

    Watch the code build. then

    root@0[~]# cd laserboy

    Here's the LaserBoy parts!

    root@0[~]# make

    Watch the code build. then...
    ............................................

    Run it! Note the dot-slash before the command.

    root@0[~]# ./laserboy

    WOW!

    If you have any questions or comments about LaserBoy, please feel free to contact me.

    James Lehman : VP / CTO
    Extra Stimulus Inc.
    58 Marshall Ave.
    Akron, Ohio USA 44303

    330 762 7137
    james@akrobiz.com

    http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy
    Last edited by James Lehman; 03-22-2008 at 21:14.

  5. #5
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    Default Possibly a better way.

    Lately I have been experimenting with external hard drive installations of Linux. There are two different connection types to think about; USB 2.0 and eSATA.

    I'd like to develop a system on an external HD that could be booted two ways. One way would be to boot up the whole computer as a Linux machine. The other would be to boot up Linux in a Virtual PC running on some other OS. That would make the whole idea of Linux look like an application instead of a completely different OS.

    Ultimately, I think the answer is to port LaserBoy to all of the other OSes with SDL.

    If there is anyone else out there interested in helping with getting LaserBoy going on any computer anywhere as easily as possible, please let me know!

    James. )

  6. #6
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    Exclamation

    NICE!!! Looks like a challenge. Do you need a different sound card for this beyond the one you are using for sound.

  7. #7
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    Default sound card in Knoppix / Windows

    All of your LaserBoy created data will be on your Windows hard drive. You can do whatever you want with the wave, ilda, dxf, bmp, palette, etc... files.

    If you are in the USA or Canada, I can call you.

    James.

  8. #8
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    Default More about Knoppix in Windows

    I've just been messing with this setup to make sure it still works.

    Sometimes I have problems with the network mount timing out and reporting a bogus IP address. So......... If this happens to you, try this: Look up your Windows machine IP by running cmd (in Windows) and typing the command...

    c:\ ipconfig

    Hit return. This is much like ifconfig in Linux. You'll see your Windows IP address. Use this information instead of your Windows Workgroup computer name like this:

    root@0[~]# mount -t smbfs -o username=user_name //192.168.0.4/laserboy /laserboy

    Where 192.168.0.4 is replaced by the real IP of your Windows machine.

    Also note, that if you get the most current tar.gz from my LaserBoy website, you can use Winzip or similar to unzip it into the laserboy directory you created on your Windows hard drive. In this case, you will have a folder inside of laserboy called ezfb. When you cd to laserboy from Knoppix, remember to cd into this ezfb directory before you issue the first make command.

    http://freshmeat.net/projects/ezfb

    Cheers!

    James.
    Last edited by James Lehman; 03-24-2008 at 23:24.

  9. #9
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    Default

    This is great news!

    I'm having some trouble getting it to work in Ubuntu 8.04 running in VMware though. The error I get is:
    eth0: error fetching interface information: Device not found

    Considering there's no eth0, that's not so strange. I do have eth1 though, so how do I start the program?

  10. #10
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    Default Use VirtualPC!

    Use Microsoft VirtualPC! It's FREE. VMware is nice, but the video emulation is nowhere near as fast as it is in VirtualPC and, every other virtual computer system I've tried puts its ethernet device on its own network and you have to set up a bridge device to get to the same network that your Windows machine is on; pain in the butt. Why bother?

    The coolest thing about Knoppix is that it comes with a framebuffer enabled kernel which is necessary to run my frame buffer based code, my favorite text editor in the whole world, "joe" and a marvolous up-and-running version of "samba" the Linux version of Windows Workgroup Shares. It's all right there and it's all FREE!

    James.
    Last edited by James Lehman; 03-25-2008 at 00:03.

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