Laser Projector (Red, Green, Purple) "Laser 3D Party Light" from Spencer's

[steve-o]

Due to the rave reviews I just bought one online.. spencers party 3D laser .. wft .. I just lurves cheap sht. ... gonna take it apart and replace most of it .. butttt .. sounds like FUN ...

[DogP]

I bought the original version of this laser scanner and started a topic a while back, I'm not really a hobbiest, i was just intrigued by the idea of writing my own files. I've since managed to mess up just about everything i can as far as how to use the SD card and the image files. the .prg file and i just don't get along, i can make no sense of the parameters and i just want a functioning playback again. Is there any chance i can get a zip file with a bunch of working ild files and a prg to run them all? I backed up the SD card at some point but i have so many files and pieces of software that i don't understand that i don't even know where that backup is to place it back to factory settings.

PM sent. And just for review... I don't think there's anything tricky about these SD cards (except the new one seems to be picky about which SD cards work). As long as your card is formatted FAT32, just put the .prg and .ild files in the "picture" folder. The .prg file has lines with comma delimited fields: <filename>,<speed>,<# of loops>[,i] (optional ignore color flag). Speed is approximately in KPPS, and # of loops gets truncated to a max of 255.

I just lurves cheap sht. ... gonna take it apart and replace most of it .. butttt .. sounds like FUN ...

I know exactly what you mean.

DogP

[GridMonkey]

Yea, i figured that out, with the ILds that came with it, but i was hunting down others/looking for methods to make my own, and many of the others i found just cause the system to spaz out, no matter what speed i try, and the few programs i found that were free couldn't seem to make any that would work. i think, as i saw further back in the thread it might be a version difference in the ild file but im not sure. I appreciate the help/files and things id just love to find a program that i could just draw in, I work in theatre as a lighting designer and sometimes its fun to add things like this. There was a production of Peter Pan i saw years ago that had a Laser Tinkerbell, im sure a way better system than this but ya know, if i could do something like that for a high school production then its a win. Anyhoo, a bit off topic but thanks for the help just the same.

[DogP]

Yep... I think it's a difference in version that causes a lot of them to not work. Regarding programs, in my limited experience, I've had decent luck with bmp2ild ( http://c4r0.elektroda.eu/_hv/index.p...=lasers/RGB2.5 ) and Monkey Tools ( http://www.fab-favreau.com/index.php...erShowSoftware ). Laserboy seems pretty powerful as well, but haven't spent the time to figure out the features (all the keystrokes remind me of using vi on unix ).

DogP

[GridMonkey]

Ive tried Monkeytools and i cant get anything i make to playback, even if i take one of the ones that does work and modify it it no longer works, gotta be a file type issue maybe i jut have a really crappy brain board in this thing. and bmptoild makes a file that doesnt play either, but both can be seen in ILDView, from the same guy who did bmptoild, just dont know. ah well thanks again though

[james]

Laserboy seems pretty powerful as well, but haven't spent the time to figure out the features (all the keystrokes remind me of using vi on unix ).

DogP

The very first version of LaserBoy was called ild2fb. I wrote a very comprehensive Linux Frame Buffer API in C (called ezfb) and I built on top of that. I used a Linux machine as a kind of high resolution video card server. I used to shell into the Linux machine with ssh from a Windows machine and render all the vector graphics on the Linux machine. The terminal was all text of course. It showed me what mode I was in and what menu items were active. I wanted to see how far I could get with just plain text terminal control. So I developed all kinds of ways to manipulate vector art, colors and palettes with keys.

James.

[DogP]

Ive tried Monkeytools and i cant get anything i make to playback, even if i take one of the ones that does work and modify it it no longer works, gotta be a file type issue maybe i jut have a really crappy brain board in this thing. and bmptoild makes a file that doesnt play either, but both can be seen in ILDView, from the same guy who did bmptoild, just dont know. ah well thanks again though

For viewing, I like zILDA: http://code.google.com/p/zilda/ . It seems to render most files correctly, and gives good info on the files (type, points, etc).

DogP

[Vidal Wolf]

I went and got one today at the nearby Spencers and I gotta say, its a winner. The reds a degree off but I think I can fix that with a bit of mirror adjusting. They are using a hard brittle epoxy to secure the dichro mount. not sure how Im going to be able to resolve the red without disturbing the purple and green.I have a micro torch I may be able to heat the plate with to melt/ soften the epoxy to move it the tiny bit.
(Sorry Jon, I got a Chi-jector ).

[GridMonkey]

Yea, the red is a bit off in mine too but i dont care about that very much right now, i found the ILDAtest 12/30k and ran that, im assuming with the prg file i put ildatest.ild,12,1 and it just goes to town. It appears to all line up right, as in how it looks in zILDA view but, what im calling the overall image refresh rate is a bit like looking at a strobe light, shouldn't the pattern be a constant, or near constant? or should i have put ildatest.ild,30,1 ? i really want to get into this but finding a lack of programs that i can understand doesn't really help me stay interested. Also, is there a way to tell the correct playback speed of an .ild file? i found a few floating around on the internet, sorry if they belong to someone, but aside from the ones that came with the unit i have no idea what the number should be.

[DogP]

I went and got one today at the nearby Spencers and I gotta say, its a winner. The reds a degree off but I think I can fix that with a bit of mirror adjusting. They are using a hard brittle epoxy to secure the dichro mount. not sure how Im going to be able to resolve the red without disturbing the purple and green.I have a micro torch I may be able to heat the plate with to melt/ soften the epoxy to move it the tiny bit.
(Sorry Jon, I got a Chi-jector ).

On mine, the green was off... I removed the screws and used a crescent wrench to twist the heatsink until the epoxy broke free. Then I adjusted/shimmed the laser and tightened it back down. I imagine you could do that to the laser or the dichro for the other colors.

Yea, the red is a bit off in mine too but i dont care about that very much right now, i found the ILDAtest 12/30k and ran that, im assuming with the prg file i put ildatest.ild,12,1 and it just goes to town. It appears to all line up right, as in how it looks in zILDA view but, what im calling the overall image refresh rate is a bit like looking at a strobe light, shouldn't the pattern be a constant, or near constant? or should i have put ildatest.ild,30,1 ? i really want to get into this but finding a lack of programs that i can understand doesn't really help me stay interested. Also, is there a way to tell the correct playback speed of an .ild file? i found a few floating around on the internet, sorry if they belong to someone, but aside from the ones that came with the unit i have no idea what the number should be.

I found that the middle value is supposed to be in KPPS, but in reality, it's slower, and especially on the older one, maxes out pretty low. When someone creates an ILD file, they might have a speed in mind, but IMO, it seems to mostly be a trial and error kinda thing to see what looks good on your projector. Like, take the boxing animation... if you speed it up a lot, it's much less flickery, but the guy moves a lot faster... and if the projector isn't very good, it starts to look really bad. Go too slow, it gets flickery, the guy moves slow, but the projector can recreate the image more accurately.

When I play around with these, I typically put 3 speeds into the .prg... 5, 10, and 20, with enough loops to give me a few seconds to observe. With 5, it's almost always way too flickery, but then I can see the detail and sharp edges. Then at 10, I see it lose a little bit of detail, but become much more viewable. At 20, depending on the file and the projector, it sometimes looks good, other times it doesn't. If it still looks good at 20, I'll bump it up to 30, which seems to be about the max usable speed on these.

DogP