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Thread: USB protocol for FB3 card

  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2008
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    Default USB protocol for FB3 card

    Hi all,

    I'm new here and pretty new to lasers (though I'm an electronic engineer, so I have some understanding of the principles involved). I recently got a Neo-Laser NLSP250RGB unit which contains a Pangolin FlashBack 3 card as control intelligence.

    Now, the only software I can find to drive this thing by USB is the Cypher stuff, and I'm all Mac (the rest of my light show runs off Modul8, so Mac is non-negotiable for me). I'm trying to do some true 3d volumetric stuff with it, and finding it really difficult using Cypher, which seems to be very buggy. It works kinda okayish under VMWare Fusion but that's hardly a solution to my underlying problem...

    I was wondering if anyone had any programming docs for the USB interface on the FB3 card, or some better (preferably Mac) software for driving it. I'm quite prepared to write a Mac driver and, indeed, to sign NDAs to get this information.

    Anyone got any ideas?

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Talking

    If you get nowhere with the USB thing, you might want to look at the plain-old ILDA connector. It works!

    And I know of a Mac OSX solution!

    James.

  3. #3
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by James Lehman View Post
    If you get nowhere with the USB thing, you might want to look at the plain-old ILDA connector. It works!

    And I know of a Mac OSX solution!

    James.
    Do tell- what I really want is a USB device with Mac drivers that I can just plug in, which has both a programming interface and some decent show design software available.

  4. #4
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    Do tell ?

    You're the one who told me about SDL!

    Get a USB surround sound thingy.
    Modify it.
    Compile LaserBoy for OSX.
    You've got yourself a system.
    Not much time or energy invested in that!

    There are some other people here who have started using it.
    You might actually get some support other than me!

    LaserBoy comes with quite a few 3D frames.
    It also imports DXF.

    I know you can program in C/C++. You could add a lot of effects of your own to ez_ilda_frame_effects.cpp and ez_ilda_frame_set_effects.cpp.

    James.

  5. #5
    Join Date
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by James Lehman View Post
    Do tell ?

    You're the one who told me about SDL!

    Get a USB surround sound thingy.
    Nope. I need a much faster device than that, and I also need one that's robust enough to handle moving around frequently.

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