ILDA cable ideas....

[Darcean]

Has anyone ever thought to make a ILDA cable snake or a ILDA cable with 4-8 connectors for the lasers, and all wired back into 1 connector for a QM2000 or FB3 or any other DAC? Is that even possible or in use? Just an idea running through my head.

Can a FB3 even handle that many lasers connected at once? questions questions questions... haha

[mixedgas]

Has anyone ever thought to make a ILDA cable snake or a ILDA cable with 4-8 connectors for the lasers, and all wired back into 1 connector for a QM2000 or FB3 or any other DAC? Is that even possible or in use? Just an idea running through my head.

Can a FB3 even handle that many lasers connected at once? questions questions questions... haha

I dont know about the FB3, but the ILDA spec says a diff driver should run a ~100 ohm impedance load with .1 uF of cable capacitance. Not all hardware can do this, but that works out to about 2-3-4 projectors paralleled in principal for a well designed card on a moderate length of cable.

Two in parallel gets done all the time. Three sometimes. A Forum member makes drive splitters with active modules. I'm sure he'll chime in here soon.

But a evil nasty raises its head. No two DPSS based projectors, unless very expensive high end or using AO blanking, have the same color vs turn-on/turn-off timing response.

The DPSS green is the main culpret. Its slow. The red and blue diodes are much, much faster, limited only by how much you spend on drivers, or about ~500 Mhz, whichever comes first.

Very few people design diode drivers for the ILDA Standard input Impedance.

So if you parallel them, you may/will get odd color responses. With old Gas lasers with PCAOM this was not a issue, so was not addressed in the cabling standard.

There is a color corrector card out there that helps. Other people just use two or more pieces of Pango hardware or use LSX and multiple DACs.

Steve

[norty303]

Running a snake of multiple cables is a waste of cable. Run a single run and split it where it needs to be split, not at the source.

[Genesis]

I've already make an ILDA to ethernet adapter to use FTP standard cable with a single color laser in diferential mode and another adapter in single ended with color laser.
very practical to use! like my ILDA tester with a DB25 housing and 6 leds to control the signals
two bicolors for X and Y
one white for modulation
one red
one green
one blue
6 resistors and thats it \o/

[dsli_jon]

We've had good-success with ILDA > an 8-9 channel high-quality / well-shielded XLR-snake.. that way, you have one 'cat o nine tails' on the input / output-side, but only one line, running to the stage.. From there, use a 'stagebox', with XLR 'thrus' for the next pj.. http://whirlwindusa.com/catalog/snak...s-audio-snakes - we've tested runs in large arenas up to ~350' with no noticable color / gain-loss or noise / distortion, etc.. work the charm..

Also, when you're 'on the road', if an XLR snake get's run-over by an careless fork-op, etc, it's certainly much-easier to repair / source a local snake, than *good-qual* / for-not a million $$$, multi-DB-25 cables, especially if a long-run, Oi..

..for 4 or more PJs, yes, would-recommend either the amazing 'DZ Splitter', or, if you're using Pango, go ethernet and .net boxes at each pj...

Here's a krazy-koncept - http://whirlwindusa.com/catalog/digi...am-laser/ebeam heh - sending your laser show data.. over a laser beam.. that seems almost...
'immoral' or something..

fwiw..
j