Lumia Extravaganza

[Stuka]

Cool!

Looks like some sort of mini-nuke out of a James Bond film...

[mikkojay]

I agree! That is very professional looking.
OK, that spawns my next question- does anyone have any input regarding the use of DMX control to incorporate Lumia into a "precompiled" show? Like using outputs from a QM?
I can see DMX controlled servos controlling beam shutters to change effects, but what would be the method for controlling things like speed or light intensity from a DMX board?
-Mike

[Laserman532]

all this talk of lumia prompted me to dig out some pix of a small device i made up a few years ago. Microsteping motor and 8 channel diode driver .
Dmx control didn't quite work out motion control + 8ch pwm code didn't take too kindly to shareing with dmx decoding.




a few more pix here

barney.

what the hell????? Now that thing is cool!!!!

[Stuka]

I agree! That is very professional looking.
OK, that spawns my next question- does anyone have any input regarding the use of DMX control to incorporate Lumia into a "precompiled" show? Like using outputs from a QM?
I can see DMX controlled servos controlling beam shutters to change effects, but what would be the method for controlling things like speed or light intensity from a DMX board?
-Mike

I'm kind of shooting for the same thing, which is why I've invested in some DMX control boards.
Pretty much everything in the current Pangolin LD2000 suite supports DMX frames. The same company I linked to earlier has some dimmer boards that could be used to control the speed of some low-amperage motors or incandescent lights, and has decoder boards that can convert DMX signals to 0-5 or 0-10 volt outputs. That company, and others, have DMX controlled relays that could be used to switch external devices.

The DMX outputs on the QM2000 should be able to handle just about any kind of commercially-available DMX lighting or effect unit currently available. Also, if you want to "tinker" with DMX and the QM2000 without having to buy an additional DMX controller: there's an "undocumented" diagnostic application, "QM2000 based DMX console" (QMX24.exe) that is installed by default in the LD2000 installation folder. It provides software sliders for all 512 DMX channels so you can test / operate DMX devices through the QM2000 before actually creating frames in Showtime.

Pretty cool!

As far as putting it all to work - I'm still in the VERY early stages of experimenting myself, but at least I know the "toys" are available when I get time to tinker!

[mikkojay]

That all sounds very cool- I like the direction you are going with your project. I can't wait to get my LD & dive into the SDK. I think timing these effects with a QM driven show would be a home run!

[mikkojay]

I almost forgot- Hey you know those "cheap" scanner sets that come with a DMX control board? I would be willing to bet that many folks just use the scanners and toss the DMX board into the parts box. I know the manual for my cheap Chinese 30k units show a DMX board, but mine came without one.
Would it be feasible to acquire one of these boards as a starting point to hack into something useful? It might be less painful in the long run to just use something made for a specific purpose, but it might be a cheap alternative if we can get our hands on some for next to nothing.
-Mike

[allthatwhichis]

Would it be feasible to acquire one of these boards as a starting point to hack into something useful? It might be less painful in the long run to just use something made for a specific purpose, but it might be a cheap alternative if we can get our hands on some for next to nothing.

I have one of the older boards and one of the newer boards if you are interested.

[carmangary]

One of the things that I have always planned on adding to Spaghetti is the ability to add DMX and TTL triggers to the timeline. I want this so I can automate my fog machine, strobes, lumia wheels, etc. I should even be able to dim the house lights with it or create fancy christmas light shows and all kinds of non-laser related time based control.

I'm thinking if I added the ability to trigger the start of a show externally, you could even trigger Spaghetti shows from within other Spaghetti shows, or from Mamba shows or whatever. That gets pretty interesting.

Anyway, I'm bringing it up because it would be a way to control external devices in sync with other shows on other platforms if that is what you wanted to do.

[fuzcub]

If you're after a simple way of generating or receiving DMX into or out of a computer , I would suggest looking at Open USB DMX . It's open source, uses a really common USB to serial chip, can be bought fully assembled, in kit form, or if you can find a USB to RS232 adaptor that uses the chip, it can be hacked to make a DMX dongle . There's lots of sample code to help intergrate it into other programs, and works rather well.
One downside is that the DMX stream is created in realtime by the host computer, so if the host is distracted there can be timing hickups in the output stream (but no messed up DMX packets). Enttec make a PRO version that has an onboard MCU to deal with timing , but this version is not open source.
Barney.

[dave]

I'm just putting the finishing touches on a board that has all the features of the northlight useful to laser, plus a few more Just tidying up the code, should have something ready to fly in a couple of weeks..

That, plus a few other DMX related boards..

I plan one of using these to shuffle the lumia wheels and Poly-20 grating via DMX control:

http://home.att.net/~northlightsyste...2toRCservo.htm

I did a little testing using one channel of the board with a standard hobby servo, with the Poly-20 wheel attached directly to the servo output wheel. So far, it looks like it the DMX-controlled positioning is VERY accurate & repeatable!

The board can control up to 8 separate servos, which could open up a LOT of possibilties for beam shuffling! The only caveat is you would have to account for the reaction time of a servo, which would be a bit slower than using a simple actuator.

These boards are designed so a DMX fail would either lock the servo in place, or recenter (your option).
SO, you could have a "fail safe" of sorts

BTW -

The company owner is quick to respond to questions, and was VERY quick in delivering the product!

Randy