Planetarium Star Projectors

[swamidog]

put it on youtube, then use the little filmstrip icon to create the link in your post.

Thanks Jem, indeed I will keep sharing it's more fun that way. Is there a way to post video on PL, or do on YouTube with a link? I was going to fire it up last night and take a few more pictures but the water softener was regenerating and flushing brine, and I didn't want to run the laser while this was happening.

[SpitzSTP]

According to sources I have found, AVI Omniscan is the world’s first 360 degree, full-dome planetarium laser projector. It uses a large glass fisheye lens at the top of the sphere which is an impressive piece of glass. The sphere is about the size of a soccer ball and inside are a pair of Cambridge scanners and an array of belt-driven optical effect wheels. The Pangolin board controls the effects wheels. It is amazing how much technology AVI stuffed into such a small space, considering it was built over a decade ago. Laser light is fed to the scanners through a fiber optic cable that threads up through the telescoping pedestal after it leaves the PCAOM. I received absolutely no documentation with it so Steve, Karl, Swami and others have been enormously helpful in figuring out how all of this works. It is my understanding that AVI stopped making the Omniscan systems some time ago but I know a few of them are still operating around the world doing fulldome shows, including this one, sans the dome. It fills the ceiling and starts to wrap down the walls, and will go wider if we don't raise the sphere quite as high.

[SpitzSTP]

Started working on things again early this morning to get ready for more shows tonight after the sun goes down. I finished hooking up the rest of the cables, including a pair from the Omniscan Key Box (labelled Effect In and Image In) to the Y-cable that goes to the back of the Pangolin card. Also, from the dataSYNC box (one cable from dataSYNC (labelled From ADAT/Sync Out) to the HD24 (Sync Out). Also ran a cable from the back of dataSYNC (labelled SMPTE Out) to the MQX Audio Card (SMPTE In). Hopefully this is correct, I guess I will find out unless anyone can suggest a way to determine this functionality beforehand. I finally figured out how to raise and lower the sphere using a switch on the Omniscan Key Box labelled "Aux", switch position up is up, down is down, found through trial and error as we have absolutely no documentation. I think there is also a way to do it through the software utility (pictured), the one I had to load Java runtime files for. The utility also seems to have a way to exercise the effects wheels, going to take half the cover off the sphere and play with it this afternoon and see if the effects wheels are operating. I emptied a good part of a can of WD-40 on the telescoping shaft and it is now going up and down very smoothly. I am on Win98SE as a limitation of the old Pangolin board, so I bought an old copy of Acronis True Image backup V.9 to backup this hard drive after many hours of hard work I cringe at the thought of losing it. I read on Wikipedia that the last version of Acronis compatible with Win89SE is V.9 but found out the hard way that nope, it isn't I need V.8. Dang Wikipedia I trusted it too much now I need to find an even older version. It is a royal pain in the arse messing with Win98SE but ye old wallet is preventing any forward progress in obtaining the new Pangolin board and migration to XP so I don't have a choice. With any luck, tonight's shows should be more interesting than last week's shows.

[SpitzSTP]

Much progress since we first hooked it up with the telescope laying flat on a cart with a piece of paper taped to the lens.

[DZ]

Absolutely stunning abstract images, these must have been mind blowing in real life. Please keep sharing

Any chance of a bit of video next time you fire her up???

Cheers

Jem

Imagine seeing that in a planetarium, filling up the entire dome!

I looked at the planetarium compendium and I'm suprised to not find much about full dome laser shows in the UK. There was 1 mention of an Omniscan in Leicester, but when I look at their website there is no mention of laser shows. Kinda suprised, seems like an untapped market for AVI.

[SpitzSTP]

Interesting, and good point about being kinda surprised.. so am I. Being such a good product, I often wonder and speculate what happened to the market for this equipment. Why did they stop making it? A few clues and conjecture on my part, is the manufacturer replaced it with a newer, solid-state version called SkyLase which I notice they also provide to domes on a for-lease, temporary basis. This would appeal to domes that do not want to risk a large capital expense for equipment, yet conduct laser shows for say a couple of months a year selling tickets Thu, Fri, Sat evenings for example. I wonder if the quality of SkyLase images is nearly as good as Omniscan, being solid-state and presumably without PCAOM and million+ color range but I m stepping out of bounds regarding my comfortable knowledge base here. The other factor, is these domes tend to play the same shows over and over and over and over again, and I for one would never grow tired of them per se, but sure would not be willing to shell out $8+ each time for the same old same old. What I would like to see, is NEW shows using the Omniscan platform, consisting of highly creative, artistic NEW material packed with abstracts, and set to "modern" music. Solid-state and other effects can ADD to this, pushing it over-the-top. No more y-a-w-n factor and maybe these cash-strapped planetariums will see an increase in ticket sales and enough to justify the expense. Cheapen anything too much and get lazy is a recipe for slow death. How many places that do laser shows, have a half-dead ion gas tube, optics in need of cleaning or replacement, and run the same old shows over-and-over again, with a half-asleep laserist or nobody there at all except to push the play button? I'd like to bring back the old-school laser shows that kept me on the edge of my seat, and worth every penny..

[DZ]

Interesting, and good point about being kinda surprised.. so am I. Being such a good product, I often wonder and speculate what happened to the market for this equipment. Why did they stop making it? A few clues and conjecture on my part, is the manufacturer replaced it with a newer, solid-state version called SkyLase which I notice they also provide to domes on a for-lease, temporary basis. This would appeal to domes that do not want to risk a large capital expense for equipment, yet conduct laser shows for say a couple of months a year selling tickets Thu, Fri, Sat evenings for example. I wonder if the quality of SkyLase images is nearly as good as Omniscan, being solid-state and presumably without PCAOM and million+ color range but I m stepping out of bounds regarding my comfortable knowledge base here. The other factor, is these domes tend to play the same shows over and over and over and over again, and I for one would never grow tired of them per se, but sure would not be willing to shell out $8+ each time for the same old same old. What I would like to see, is NEW shows using the Omniscan platform, consisting of highly creative, artistic NEW material packed with abstracts, and set to "modern" music. Solid-state and other effects can ADD to this, pushing it over-the-top. No more y-a-w-n factor and maybe these cash-strapped planetariums will see an increase in ticket sales and enough to justify the expense. Cheapen anything too much and get lazy is a recipe for slow death. How many places that do laser shows, have a half-dead ion gas tube, optics in need of cleaning or replacement, and run the same old shows over-and-over again, with a half-asleep laserist or nobody there at all except to push the play button? I'd like to bring back the old-school laser shows that kept me on the edge of my seat, and worth every penny..

It's true, the Omniscan was replaced with the Skylase, which is just a solid state version of the Omniscan projector. Basically running the same shows that the Omniscan used. Although, AVI does have a new show listed on their site that wasn't there a few weeks ago. So they seem to still be producing new content. The sad part about the Skylase is that every one that I've seen lacks the scan thru effect wheels. Even though the content is still in the shows! In some shows, they would have a red lumia displaying low near the cove. Today you just have a bunch of red dots that surround the dome.

[SpitzSTP]

Interesting commentary.. When I think about it, from strictly a profit motive, it would make sense for them to spend less on the equipment and cut corners where possible and maybe the customer won't even notice. That might be true, for those too young to remember the way it USED to be? I dunno.. OK, so ALL of the effects wheels are now working with the AVI Diagnostic utility. I selected each one and notice the motor turning to place that particular wheel into the scan path. This particular instrument has TEN wheels. Someone at the Science Center told me that this system, as originally delivered, has more wheels than usual and is "special" in that regard. It is nice to finally see wheel movement inside the chamber despite being dormant for a very long time. I also got the telescoping motor lift working through software control in addition to the manual "Aux" switch. I cannot think of anything that hasn't been tested to some degree, and so far it all looks good. The sun is starting to go down, and the water hoses are ready. The anticipation builds.

[SpitzSTP]

A friend of mine owns another Omniscan, hopefully he won't mind if I share the pictures of his system here.

[SpitzSTP]

Karl came over, and we watched a few shows.. this time, with the effects wheels in motion. Metallica, U2, and Hypnotica (again, one of my fav's).