Difference between revisions of "Interactive lasers"

From Tmplab
(Goals)
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== Goals ==
 
== Goals ==
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The main idea is to add interactivity to "leisure" lasers. i.e with a gamepad one can play to old style vector games on city buildings.
  
 
Different levels of complexity are possible. Commercial lasers uses ilda files/connections to draw whatever you want, but you can build your own, see hardware section.
 
Different levels of complexity are possible. Commercial lasers uses ilda files/connections to draw whatever you want, but you can build your own, see hardware section.

Revision as of 12:56, 4 January 2015

(WIKI IN PROGRESS)

Goals

The main idea is to add interactivity to "leisure" lasers. i.e with a gamepad one can play to old style vector games on city buildings.

Different levels of complexity are possible. Commercial lasers uses ilda files/connections to draw whatever you want, but you can build your own, see hardware section.

  • The very fast and easy plan is to switch ilda scenes according to some inputs. You can use already made ilda files (see download section) in a SDcard plugged inside the laser fixture and use DMX protocol to switch. DMX usb cards are cheap, usually we use enttec ones. DMX controlled lasers are cheaper than
  • If the plan is too draw live, it depends on the laser fixture DIY or commercial. Lot of possibilities depending on the number of colors, from using an arduino, a 5.1 USB soundcard upt to use commercially (opensource) cards using the standarts ilda connect ports.

Hardware

Obviously there is DIY Lasers and commercial ones and there is a bunch of cards integrating some DACs to talk to the laser fixture.
A great forum for bootstrap your project is laser freak that comes in different langages.

We play with two different setups :

  • a green DIY laser made at la Blackboxe with a lasershark USB DAC card.
  • an ilda DB25 ports RGB commercial laser for clubs with an Etherdream USB DAC card. Obviously is much more expensive but has some great advantage : the ether dream is directly tcp/IP controlled, so you can imagine very cool projects with very easy setup and of course the programming langage you prefer.

Commercial Lasers

Ether dream dac

Laser.png