post your eye melty abstracts here

[flecom]

That irony of that statement is perfect for this forum, a place where good advice is frequently discarded in the name of ego and arrogance.

If the past is forgotten, all future generations will be forced to re-invent the wheel.


Knowledge that is discarded by most must be saved by the few. And if you'll kindly get your head out of your ass long enough to see your computer screen clearly, you will realize that many if not most "secrets" of the industry's early days have been freely shared on this forum.




Surely you must be doing a lot of drugs if you really think Steve would be the type to sand part numbers off of chips. That shit pisses him off as much as anybody else. Those chips were probably sanded off when you were still in school. Nobody does that anymore in this industry. I've sent many boards to Steve over the years for him to reverse engineer for me to try to figure out what the mystery sanded chips were, and to accuse him of doing that to keep something secret is absurd.

Are you talking about an old LFI geometric correction board by any chance? If so, I think there are more available, also with sanded chips. BTW, that board wasn't actually Steves, he was selling them for me.

PS- If you are done bitching about the older generation of laserists not sharing enough secrets, perhaps you should forget all knowledge that you gained freely on this and other forums and see how hard it would be for you to get where you are today with your hobby without the "secrets" that are already public knowledge.

You do realize that ALL technical facts, advise, tips tricks, and spec sheets found on this forum was somebody's secret at one point, right?

That being said, My advise to you, is to be grateful and thankful for what you have, and stop wasting time complaining about that which you do not have- You'll be a much happier person that way

really? because he proudly exclaimed he knew what the parts were but *might* tell us in his will

and obviously this forum is a giant wealth of information, and that's great, I try to contribute what I can, and many, many people do the same (yes even Steve) but to just see someone post OVER and OVER again "HAHA I KNOW AND YOU DONT" is just not helpful, and quite frankly just being a jerk as was mentioned above

Lasers just aren't cool anymore to young people.. They've been over exposed to everything tech and just don't care anymore.. So, what draws a crowd to a lasershow?? The music of the day!!! Yes, we old bastards hate the crap but, if you want a crowd, you have to market the MUSICwith lasers. I've always liked the idea of interaction between people and lasers.. Put a half naked girl in a cage suspended from the ceiling and guard her with laser beams... You'll draw a crowd
Or, do a live band with lasers. If the music is popular, you'll have a crowd.

at the risk of derailing this thread even more, you would be surprised... while our experience at the MSTP shows that yes, current music helps attract a crowd they are a very fickle one, they will come see a show for whatever is popular right *NOW*, and then forget about it... at our planetarium we pretty much sell out our Floyd/zeppelin/Marley shows every time (and it's mostly teenagers-young adults)

they did a Green Day show when they were popular, and it did well, but then dropped off quickly... the Radiohead show does fairly well

although a lot of people will just go to watch any show and have their headphones on with their own soundtrack, which is fine too as long as it's not loud enough to disturb anyone near them

[Bradfo69]

I think the big key there is, "Miami". I may have asked you this before but what percentage were tourists versus locals, if you have any idea.

I think planetarium laser shows could still sell like that in major tourist type destinations. Let's put it this way... if the city has a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum, a Hard Rock Café and more than 8 rental car companies stationed in it's airport.... "maybe" there is a shot.

[flecom]

not sure, we really don't have that data... but I would say a large percentage are locals... I see a lot of people over and over again... mostly high-school - college students, some younger, some older...

2 things things changed that helped the numbers immensely...

1) reduced the frequency of shows from weekly to monthly... now people have to plan for it and won't "just go next week" aka never
2) advertise advertise advertise - on facebook, twitter, instagram, craigslist, yelp, foursquare etc you can advertise events for free

(I can't tell you how many people would walk in and exclaim "wow I haven't been in here since I was a kid!" or something to that effect)

we run 5 shows per night (1 early "family" show and 4 regular shows) and generally sell them all out except for the family show fairly consistently...

additionally while the shows are pre-recorded adat shows we try to keep it dynamic to keep people coming back and not make the shows repetitive or boring, manual control of beam rails, scan through effects, intelligent dmx lighting, the star projector, and when I bring my projector I run that with LivePRO or more recently Beyond with a control surface (I am still developing my knowledge of Beyond and the channels with abstracts etc)

people like it, we have fun with it, shows are generally filled to capacity (all the seats and people lay down towards the front of the dome in front of the seating too)

also keep a schedule we do "fabulous first friday" (of the month) and it works well... only in Dec we do fri/sat and that one saturday numbers are traditionally very low

[Bradfo69]

edit: ^Interesting. Any idea how many attend the planetarium for the sake of going to a planetarium?


For shits and giggles, I'll try to reel this back in a little to the post topic and ask DZ..... sowhenamigittinachancetobuyacolormodbox!?!?

And for Swami.... SELEM 2013... ride in from the airport.... we discussed your eventual desire to sell copies of your art. Aside from the one we've discussed... now that I think you've been "validated", where do things stand with marketing the LSX shows?

[flecom]

edit: ^Interesting. Any idea how many attend the planetarium for the sake of going to a planetarium?


For shits and giggles, I'll try to reel this back in a little to the post topic and ask DZ..... sowhenamigittinachancetobuyacolormodbox!?!?

And for Swami.... SELEM 2013... ride in from the airport.... we discussed your eventual desire to sell copies of your art. Aside from the one we've discussed... now that I think you've been "validated", where do things stand with marketing the LSX shows?

star shows are generally low attendance, the first fridays we do a free afternoon star show that is generally fairly well attended (since it's also advertised) but it's a very different crowd than what shows up for the laser shows

the laser shows are actually the only thing in the museum that make money!

the more I see LSX the more I wan't to pick up a copy to play with, but time is not on my side, been doing a lot more product development (from prototype to design for manufacturing 100k pieces in china) for some clients

but after seeing some of Swami's work at SELEM I was blown away by just how beautiful the abstracts coming out of LSX were... I kind of want to sit down in front of Beyond and just see if I can emulate any of those images just to see if it can be done

[mixedgas]

So is all this attacking because you want a console for the museum?

It would have been a lot easier if you just asked in a PM.

Myself and a partner bought the rights to an excellent console design at an estate sale. One of the legal conditions of the partnership and of respect for the designer's Brother's wishes, is that I cannot simply publish it. I can sell a copy of the drawings to you if you have a valid corporate entity to build one unit. There would be a NDA involved, per my partner. It would be ridiculously inexpensive, the cost of my time to clean up the drawings. The drawings are faint pencil and I assure you, they do not copy well.



Its very simple hardware, the huge cost is the switches, large arrays of 10 turn potentiometers, and all the hand wiring between the boards.
You need quality 1/4 inch shaft 10 Turns with the analog designs, as the VCOs have huge dynamic ranges that even a 16 bit DAC will not cover. If there is any mechanical noise in the pots, it spoils the event for the viewer. Even if you did use a DAC to control the oscillators, the software can't compensate for the hardware drift like a human does. Locking the oscillators with a PLL looks bad because it does not preserve the ratios and phase of the wave.

For what I have, Every preset needs 6 or more ten turn pots and about 10 single turn pots. This gets expensive. You need a minimum of three presets to get you thru a song.

The other way of using it requires recording a baseline track.

This units claim to fame is its electrostatic modulators, that adds a unique multifrequency ringing spectrum to the color edges. At 350$ a modulator to build it, that ain't cheap for 27 levels of RGB. It can drive diodes, but the final result looks different. There is analog slow fade function on top of the digital levels. That gets driven by three different kinds of ramps (sin,log,linear) for the "jellyfish" pulsations.

The other console I have uses Burr Brown parts (not just the 4423) made for sonar systems that just don't exist anymore. When asked, Burr Brown div of TI spent two weeks digging up the partial internal schematics of the modules. They are too difficult to reproduce without the gain matching of huge amounts of transistors..


Steve

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LSX has four abstract sources. The LDS engine, The expression Editor, Mike Svob's engine from Laserous Light Flowers, aka LFI Player, and Rick Gebhardt's code. Andrew brilliantly tweeked the LDS expression editor, its a whole new beast.

I know this because I was the one who suggested calling Mike and Rick for the code permission. Mike kindly said yes when we talked. I had a bit of a role in selecting the hardware for Laserous Light Flowers before Mike went to LFI. I was Rick's second customer. The Basic LDS engine pre LSX was very difficult to use. I and others asked Andrew for improvements during Beta.

Go get LSX, no brainer.

Beyond has very similar, but yet different functions. Its hugely capable. They actually complement each other.

PS, The 14 pin is a TL074 Low Noise version of a TL084. I have tubes of the eight pin sanded off semi-custom chips.
The deal was I would support the boards, remember? You've never requested support.

Oh well, Holidays are stressful for everyone.
I,I,I, I Myself hates how Me writes.



Steve

[laserist]

Conventional Wisdom

The audience for laser light shows in planetariums has moved on. Movies, television, and computer games have raised the bar beyond the reach of laser light shows. Today's young adults just don't have the attention span for planetarium shows. People today have so many demands on their time that the planetarium just can't rise above the background noise. In other words, "It's not my fault the theater is empty."

<rant>
An Alternative View

It is your fault. If the audience has moved on, why haven't you kept up? 20 million tickets to Laserium were sold way back when. But while the projectors in use today have faster scanners - by every other measure today's projectors are vastly inferior to the projectors used to do Laserium in the 1970's. You never kept up. You didn't even try. You bought a projector and did your best, but you didn't have the slightest idea what the hell you were doing. But, and this is important, you honestly believe the audience doesn't know the difference. I know the difference, and I gotta say - your shows mostly suck.

It's not just your shows. Often your architect conspired to cause you to fail. Are you buried inside a larger building? Congratulations, your architect didn't have the slightest idea what your needs were.

How's that marketing working? Do you have control of your marketing, or does everything fall under the Museum's Brand? Does the person that's responsible for the planetarium's marketing believe the planetarium can succeed? Do you have any control at all? Do you care, or do you prefer the way it is?

Do you ever focus on developing your planetarium's audience? You know why people still come to your Pink Floyd show? It's because they self identify as Pink Floyd fans. They aren't your fans. But when they come through your door you have an opportunity to make them into your fans. But let's be honest, you're squandering that opportunity, aren't you? I'm guessing you let the people into the theater; somebody presses a button at the beginning of the show, the operator just sits back until the show ends, and says Bye! Alternately the operator jams with this or that effect that distracts attention away from the some of the lamer aspects of your laser show. Either way you've been missing the opportunity to build your audience since your first day - haven't you?
</rant>

If you want to succeed, you have to start by taking ownership of the failure...

[flecom]

So is all this attacking because you want a console for the museum?

not sure where you got that from, we have 2 analog consoles in the planetarium, and image computers and all sorts of fun stuff... I don't really care personally, this is more about the sharing of information to keep it alive in the future

I love the analog consoles, and would love to build more to play with, but there is really nothing out there if anyone else wants to build one or if I just wanted to build one to mess around with at home

Conventional Wisdom

The audience for laser light shows in planetariums has moved on. Movies, television, and computer games have raised the bar beyond the reach of laser light shows. Today's young adults just don't have the attention span for planetarium shows. People today have so many demands on their time that the planetarium just can't rise above the background noise. In other words, "It's not my fault the theater is empty."

<rant>
An Alternative View

It is your fault. If the audience has moved on, why haven't you kept up? 20 million tickets to Laserium were sold way back when. But while the projectors in use today have faster scanners - by every other measure today's projectors are vastly inferior to the projectors used to do Laserium in the 1970's. You never kept up. You didn't even try. You bought a projector and did your best, but you didn't have the slightest idea what the hell you were doing. But, and this is important, you honestly believe the audience doesn't know the difference. I know the difference, and I gotta say - your shows mostly suck.

It's not just your shows. Often your architect conspired to cause you to fail. Are you buried inside a larger building? Congratulations, your architect didn't have the slightest idea what your needs were.

How's that marketing working? Do you have control of your marketing, or does everything fall under the Museum's Brand? Does the person that's responsible for the planetarium's marketing believe the planetarium can succeed? Do you have any control at all? Do you care, or do you prefer the way it is?

Do you ever focus on developing your planetarium's audience? You know why people still come to your Pink Floyd show? It's because they self identify as Pink Floyd fans. They aren't your fans. But when they come through your door you have an opportunity to make them into your fans. But let's be honest, you're squandering that opportunity, aren't you? I'm guessing you let the people into the theater; somebody presses a button at the beginning of the show, the operator just sits back until the show ends, and says Bye! Alternately the operator jams with this or that effect that distracts attention away from the some of the lamer aspects of your laser show. Either way you've been missing the opportunity to build your audience since your first day - haven't you?
</rant>

If you want to succeed, you have to start by taking ownership of the failure...

I am not sure what the you are talking about, I stated quite clearly that at least our case the lasers shows in our planetarium are actually the only part of the museum that makes money and we sell out pretty much every show we do (and our dome is 65', not small by any means)

we do not have control of the marketing of the museum but we did post the laser shows to various online and social groups which helped our numbers enormously

people love the laser shows and even thank us (persons behind the console) on the way out

and the shows that consistently sell out are not new, floyd/zeppelin/doors/etc shows sell out pretty consistently

[DZ]

For shits and giggles, I'll try to reel this back in a little to the post topic and ask DZ..... sowhenamigittinachancetobuyacolormodbox!?!?

LOL! It's been an interesting conversation in here! For what it's worth, the color mod is getting closer but will still take a bit of time to get it complete. I've not had much luck finding a decent enclosure for an external box and kinda like the idea of making the color mod a 2U panel to be added to the Z-5 console. Hoping to have something available in early 2015.

[laserist]

1st and for foremost - I was speaking to the entire planetarium community.

2nd - The question about focusing on developing your audience certainly applies to your under attended planetarium shows.

3rd - Really?! Planetariums and Giant Screen Theaters are in death spirals and you're proud saying "we sell out pretty much every show we do" which sounds REALLY impressive until one remembers you slashed the schedule down to one evening a month! Many planetariums have also renovated and cut the number of seats in their theaters by a factor of 2. Do you have a reality check scheduled at any point prior to simply closing the museum's doors forever?

I am not sure what the you are talking about, I stated quite clearly that at least our case the lasers shows in our planetarium are actually the only part of the museum that makes money and we sell out pretty much every show we do (and our dome is 65', not small by any means)

we do not have control of the marketing of the museum but we did post the laser shows to various online and social groups which helped our numbers enormously

people love the laser shows and even thank us (persons behind the console) on the way out

and the shows that consistently sell out are not new, floyd/zeppelin/doors/etc shows sell out pretty consistently