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Mini-review of new (and very affordable) ScanLSP-20 scanners from LaserShowParts.com
Hey folks;
Well, I started writing this review before SELEM, so I figured it's high time I post it. Took me a while to get the pictures res-sized and uploaded, but it's all done now. Sorry in advance for the somewhat blurry photos - I was trying out a new laser on my galvo test plate and my digital camera didn't like it at all. (Must be leaking some IR...) Switched back to the old laser after a while, so some of the later pictures turned out better. Anyway, on to the review:
The ScanLSP scanners are a new item for LaserShowParts.com. They are *significantly* less expensive than the ScanPro line, yet they offer considerable performance nonetheless. What do I mean by "significantly less expensive"? I'm talking less than HALF the cost of the ScanPro line. If you are on a budget, these are scanners you should be looking at. (Edit: They have a couple sets of these scanners listed on e-bay right now with a buy-it-now price of just $145!)
Right out of the box, you'll notice that the scanner amps are much smaller than anything you've seen before:
We're talking tiny here! They also have a largeish heat sink on the back, which is reminicant of the much larger ScanPro50 amps. That heat sink is enough to keep the amps cool even if they are otherwise completely insulated from the baseplate. (I didn't even have a fan on them, and they never exceeded 120 degrees F during testing.) Speaking of insulation, you'll need to mount the amps on some sort of stand-offs, as there is no base plate on the bottom of the amps.
Apart from the micro-sized amps, there is one other surprise you'll find when you unpack these scanners. They come with a DMX-controlled pattern board that supports audio triggering (via the included condenser microphone), and there is a potentiometer connected to the board to adjust the scan angle when running in DMX mode. It has a dip switch block to set the DMX address and mode, and it also has ILDA in and out cables which can be used to bypass the DMX module completely:
Look closely and you'll see there are connectors for X, Y and the R,G B signals right on the board. (Cool!) Note that it does not come with DMX connectors, however. You'll need to wire those into the DMX data header on the board yourself if you want to connect it to your DMX controller.
So, how do they perform, you ask? Well, for a set of scanners that cost less than $200, I wasn't expecting much. I'm happy to report, however, that I was pleasantly surprised. Here's the ILDA test pattern running at 20Kpps and 10 degrees optical scan angle with the stock-out-of-the-box factory tuning:
Not bad, eh? Ok, the circle is shifted to the right ever so slightly, but otherwise it looks DAMN good. And remember, this is factory stock tuning. I could have tweaked it in a bit tighter, but at this point I was so surprised at the performance that I wanted to see what else they could do... (And, embarrassingly, I never did get back around to tweaking the amps! Sorry...)
Here's the "grid" test pattern. Pay very close attention to the corners:
Ok - the shot is blurry as hell... Sorry about that. But look at those corners! I've reviewed 30K scanners that didn't look this good even after I spend a few hours tweaking them. These things looked great right out of the box!
Here's the LaserMedia test pattern. As you can see, the scanners are running at slightly different speeds. Nonetheless, the image looks really good, and remember this is factory stock tuning! (The lines are sharper because I switched lasers at this point, and also moved the camera back and zoomed in to compensate. That seemed to help with the "blooming" effect.)
I let the scanners run for about 3 hours before I took these pictures, and during that time the scanners never got any warmer than 90 degrees F. The amps did get a bit warmer, but even so they didn't exceed 120 degrees F.
Also, I had the amps supported on a thick piece of acrylic during the test. (Remember - no base plate, so I needed to insulate the bottom of the board from the aluminum optical plate.) With them sitting on that plastic, they certainly couldn't conduct much heat away through that. I did not have a fan blowing on them either. The room air was circulating slightly from the ceiling fan, and obviously that was enough to remove the heat from the fins on the heat sinks.
Mirror performance was on par with the other scanners I've tested recently; roughly 2% loss per mirror. I only measured the efficiency at 532 nm however, and at exactly 45 degrees at that. Still, the numbers are in line with the newer mirrors that most Chinese scanner manufacturers seem to be using these days. (As opposed to the old mirrors that had 4 to 5 % loss per mirror.) Also, the scanners were not especially loud or quiet, but again they were on par with most other units I've tested.
One small problem did manifest itself early in the testing, and that was that the scanners appear to be exceptionally sensitive to noise in the input signal. I initially had them connected to my Pangolin card using only the X+/X- and Y+/Y- lines, with no connection to the ILDA ground. When I did this, I had all kinds of noise in the scanned image, which rather surprised me.
Eventually I decided to ground the X & Y inputs, and that solved the problem, but this is the first time I've encountered this problem with a set of scanners. It may be nothing, but if you do have noise problems with these units, try grounding the inputs first!
OK - one final picture to show off the capabilities of these scanners. This next frame is quite demanding. I got it from DrLava, and it has over 1000 points. I'm sure you'll recognize this famous cartoon cat:
Not bad, eh? And remember, these things cost less than $200!
Bottom line, these are some very affordable scanners that will still give you good performance. True, you'll get a bit of flicker at only 20Kpps, but if you're on a budget I'm sure you can live with it. I wouldn't suggest pushing these scanners too far, as I noticed that above 24Kpps they didn't perform very well at all. But at 20K speeds they were *really* nice. And at this price, you can't beat them. The fact that they also come with the DMX pattern board puts this deal over the top.
There are more pictures (including high resolution pictures of the scanners and the DMX board) in the gallery. I've set up a separate album for the pictures from this review. Go have a look!
For the record, these scanners were donated to SELEM 2009 as door prizes once I finished the review on them. Gary Harper (aka Carmangary - the author behind the Spaghetti laser show software) was the winner of these scanners. (Big thanks to Dave and Aijii at LaserShowParts.com for supporting us!)
Adam
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Originally Posted by michelrietveld
