Laser lumia illuminated obelisk

[Jem]

Inspiring work

Did you try it internally projecting through a wide angle 'fish eye' type lens. Focussing shouldn't be an issue as the light is coherent, so the beam should be in focus from top to bottom... Just thinking out loud here. Methinks this is something that requires further investigation

Love the idea of the 'sock', that makes it much easier to fabricate, also makes it cheaper and easy to move around. as I said... Inspiring work, thaks for posting

Cheers

Jem

[Stoney3K]

This also gets me a'thinkin -- how would an RGB triad shot through a lumia setup (like this) work as a wall washer effect? It should be dead simple to put something like that together.... LD's are just driven CW, and you could even dim them through PWM because the beam isn't scanning anywhere...

An AVR controller with enough PWM outputs for both the LD drivers and some motors would get you far enough. Add some 445nm, 638nm and 532nm, maybe from cheap pointer cores, and you're pretty much in business.

Edit: I've done the 'pole with sock' construction on numerous events with standard 30cm triangle and box trussing. 30cm trussing is great since you can just stick an LED PAR-can on the inside.

[LaserWizard]

I guess this is some kind of artistic metaphor for life, everything must come to an end. Great work.

[robvdv]

Did you try it internally projecting through a wide angle 'fish eye' type lens.

The internal supporting structure would cast a shadow against the screen. I thought of using telescoping carbon fibre antenna masts as a way of minimizing this, but ultimately you can't get that nice, uniform illusion with internal illumination unless you inflate the structure to keep it rigid (but then you have no nice sharp corners). Compromises

how would an RGB triad shot through a lumia setup (like this) work as a wall washer effect?

Yeah, I'm sure it would look fantastic. I quite enjoy the analogue approach to spraying the light around. Galvos give a very rigid, regimented effect.

[Jem]

Thanks for the feedback and I appreciate what you're saying, it makes complete sense when you think about it. Absolutely no point in trying to reinvent the wheel. Still, it's given me food for thought and a good starting point... I now just need to make a start

Please keep us informed of future projects, you seem to be a creative sort of chap and I'm intrigued to see what you come up with next

Cheers

Jem

[dar303]

I am going to attempt my own version of this great project!
I'm involved in a music festival in Sweden called Norbergfestival(.com) that takes place in abandoned iron mine and one of the stages has a 65 meter tall unpainted concrete tower that would be perfect covered in blue fire!
I will post pics if this gets off the ground!

[robvdv]

Sounds like fun . At that sort of size I'd probably knife edge a bunch of blues together and then bounce them off a scanning mirror and then through the lumia wheel. Good luck!

[dar303]

Good idea, I might have a left over scanner. Probably a good idea if I use more than 1W of blue, the acrylic might not like it otherwise!

[Stoney3K]

Sounds like fun . At that sort of size I'd probably knife edge a bunch of blues together and then bounce them off a scanning mirror and then through the lumia wheel. Good luck!

If you're only going to shoot it through a lumia, don't bother knife edging or dichro'ing beams together.

Just point them at the (approximate) same spot on the lumia wheel, since the lumia scatters over such a wide angle, beam misalignment doesn't matter a thing.

[robvdv]

I don't think you'll get as crisp a pattern if you do it that way. I've overlaid two lines on top of each other (admittedly shone through different bits of the wheel) and the result was a bit of a blurry, indistinct projection.