Does anyone make a decent commercial lumia projector?

[8ball]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

My house has been graced by a Laserpod for a long time, and I continue to love the look of lumia on 25 ft ceilings.

The amazing lumia art of people like swami, clickamouse and others here inspires me to find a magic RGB lumia machine if it exists. I've seen the (discontinued) American DJ and Chauvet lumia units. I've also seen a couple of Chinese units and I know the UK designer of Laserpod had a unsuccessful Kickstarter for a sequel recently. Unfortunately I lack the time, expertise and variances to build something myself.

Are there any great commercial lumia units I am overlooking for say less than $2k?

Thanks for any suggestions!

[kecked]

I remember a german firm did but that was ten years ago.

http://www.laserspectacles.com/produ...mia-projector/

[laserist]

Lumia are the second easiest things to do with a laser. (Laser pointer is the first) Take a piece of shower glass, shine a laser through it, and you’ve got a lumia effect, but the devil is in the details. If you want to build a projector around your lumia effect you’re probably going to need a motor. Probably a real slow motor. Say a motor with a 1000:1 gearhead. These are kind of hard to come by, but you can find deals now and then if you keep your eyes open. If you want to add it to an existing projector you need to figure out how to route the beam through the lumia effect. The easiest way is use mirrors and an actuator of some kind to route the laser beam through your lumia effect. Alternatively, you can move your lumia in front of your scanner. The second option allows you some degree of interacting with your lumia effect by multiplexing different color beams through different parts of your lumia which can be a really nice effect. In this case you can also eliminate the motor and just treat your lumia as a scan through effect. You lose a little functionality, but hey if you try to do everything you’ll never ship anything. (Of course doing nothing has its own issues) If you take the first option and route the beam through your lumia effect I highly recommend using a prism or dicros to split it into individual colors (assuming they’re superimposed to begin with), and ideally having something to move the beams in at least one axis to allow playing the lumia effect. Routing the laser through your lumia effect allows you to add lumia effects without the crowding that sliding multiple lumia effects in front of your scanner implies.

Back in the bad old days Laserium had 9 transmission lumia effect positions, two reflection lumia effect positions, and two transmission turrets with 5 effects per turret. Each one was activated by one or more actuators, had one to three motors, and two had dedicated high speed galvos for raster scan through effects. As you might imagine Laserium projectors were expensive. Minimally what I just described had 15 motors at about $200 each, 12 actuators at about $100 each, hubs, mounts, masks, standoff accessories, more motors, more actuators, a housing, and the electronics to control it all. Could you build a “good enough” lumia projector at a $2000 dollar price point? Sure, I guess you could - depending on your definition of “good enough”, making money selling that projector would depend on other people’s definitions of “good enough” and ultimately what they want to do with it.

[swamidog]

my homemade lumia projector, which i consider more than "good enough".

Lumia are the second easiest things to do with a laser. (Laser pointer is the first) Take a piece of shower glass, shine a laser through it, and you’ve got a lumia effect, but the devil is in the details. If you want to build a projector around your lumia effect you’re probably going to need a motor. Probably a real slow motor. Say a motor with a 1000:1 gearhead. These are kind of hard to come by, but you can find deals now and then if you keep your eyes open. If you want to add it to an existing projector you need to figure out how to route the beam through the lumia effect. The easiest way is use mirrors and an actuator of some kind to route the laser beam through your lumia effect. Alternatively, you can move your lumia in front of your scanner. The second option allows you some degree of interacting with your lumia effect by multiplexing different color beams through different parts of your lumia which can be a really nice effect. In this case you can also eliminate the motor and just treat your lumia as a scan through effect. You lose a little functionality, but hey if you try to do everything you’ll never ship anything. (Of course doing nothing has its own issues) If you take the first option and route the beam through your lumia effect I highly recommend using a prism or dicros to split it into individual colors (assuming they’re superimposed to begin with), and ideally having something to move the beams in at least one axis to allow playing the lumia effect. Routing the laser through your lumia effect allows you to add lumia effects without the crowding that sliding multiple lumia effects in front of your scanner implies.

Back in the bad old days Laserium had 9 transmission lumia effect positions, two reflection lumia effect positions, and two transmission turrets with 5 effects per turret. Each one was activated by one or more actuators, had one to three motors, and two had dedicated high speed galvos for raster scan through effects. As you might imagine Laserium projectors were expensive. Minimally what I just described had 15 motors at about $200 each, 12 actuators at about $100 each, hubs, mounts, masks, standoff accessories, more motors, more actuators, a housing, and the electronics to control it all. Could you build a “good enough” lumia projector at a $2000 dollar price point? Sure, I guess you could - depending on your definition of “good enough”, making money selling that projector would depend on other people’s definitions of “good enough” and ultimately what they want to do with it.

[laserist]

When you make something for yourself - other people's definition of "good enough" doesn't matter. You can use wonderful one off components that you'd be unlikely to select for a commercial product because you picked it up for pennies on the dollar. (I've got about 40 BLDC Olympus motors with 1000:1 planetary gear heads that I'll probably never use, but they are so nice!) I'm in the process of building a lumia projector that will be "good enough" for me, but there's no way I could hit a $2000 price point producing it commercially.

[8ball]

Thanks swamidog. Your thread and videos helped inspire me to post.

I actually think there would be a small market for somewhat custom lumia projectors at a reasonable price point.

[laserist]

Can you describe the capabilities of the projector you're envisioning?

[kclements]

Not sure if these would work but the price looks good.

https://www.pololu.com/product/1596

[laserist]

Generally around 1/2 RPM is what you're shooting for...

[BlueFang]

Man, I was getting ready to recommend the American DJ Hypnotic RGB projector as a good starting point - I've had mine for several years now, and it is still going strong. I had originally planned to do some mods with it, but haven't really found the time or desire - it is pretty decent right out of the box - however, it appears they are no longer being made - and are being sold for ungodly amounts on ebay... I never knew I would buy a laser projector that went up in value over the years