Yet Another Spirograph Generator

[tribble]

rodman, I am not sure I could reproduce that video today if I tried! It was an early version of the spirograph, and I may have run the output through LaserBoy for 'optimization.' Doing that will drastically change the output, maybe in a cool way, and maybe not! But if you set the laserboy max distance to something reasonable and optimize the frame set, it should keep your scanners happy.

What I do is this:

First, set resolution to 1ms. I think I will make this the default in the future.

Second, keep your motor speeds +/- 1500 RPM or so.

Then, decide how fast-changing you want the resulting show to be. The more settings you change between two keyframes, the more rapid the change is going to when projected. You can control the speed of the changes by adjusting the tweens. Too many tweens, things get boring. Too few, things fly by without any chance to see them. I have been playing with changing one or two motor speeds at a time, and two is pretty good.

I have been setting points per frame to 2000. I adjust tweens based on the delta between RPMs in adjacent keyframes such that I get maybe a 2RPM per tween shift. That means if keyframe one has M1 RPM of 500, and keyframe two has M1 RPM of 400, I might use 50 tweens. Adjust to your liking.

Sometimes you can adjust the size as well; I have not played with that as much. There are many degrees of freedom and I have not tried them all, not even close!

I find it easiest to set up a keyframe file in excel and use it to keep things orderly. You can use the random function to generate random numbers, and you can use formulas to automatically generate the tweens to your preferred rate. Just save as CSV, import, and preview in ZILDA or Quickshow or whatever.

Please be careful with your equipment! I do not have a 'real' projector, nor Pangolin anything, nor LSX, nor Mamba, nor iShow. Start with SMALL projection angles the first time you run through a generated file with experimental settings.

GENERAL DISCLAIMER: I disclaim all liability for anyone generating a bizarre file and somehow damaging their equipment! I think no matter how hard I try to prevent that, someone will find a way to get their setup to do something insane and blame me; therefore, I make NO WARRANTY that the output of the spirograph generator will NOT break your scanners! That said, I have a lot of fun with it and you can too.

Spiro on,
tribble

[tribble]

Here are some nifty patterns I've found so far:

M1Rpm	M2RPM	M3RPM	M4RPM	M1rad	M2rad	M3Rad	M4Rad	Res
-91	-815	634	0	72	67	100	0	1
-91	-1540	634	0	72	67	100	0	1
-200	150	501	-201	100	100	100	100	1

Use almost-stable patterns in N motors and then widely vary an additional motor to find more cool patterns!

[rodman1369]

Here are some nifty patterns I've found so far:

M1Rpm	M2RPM	M3RPM	M4RPM	M1rad	M2rad	M3Rad	M4Rad	Res
-91	-815	634	0	72	67	100	0	1
-91	-1540	634	0	72	67	100	0	1
-200	150	501	-201	100	100	100	100	1

Use almost-stable patterns in N motors and then widely vary an additional motor to find more cool patterns!

Darn it! Now I want to leave work early and go play!!!
But my wife works nights too and wouldn't understand. ;(

Soon!!!!

[AnAnonymousParty]

I thought I was the only one interested in this kind of stuff. I've been working on similar software, but a different model that reflects the analog circuitry I've been building for my own projector. Looks something like:

[cfavreau]

Awesome! I have one that I have been finishing up (been finishing up for 4 versions

Any chance we get to play with it?

Thanks!

[dsli_jon]

Very nice... Thanks for sharing these..

..un-related to these fine-programs, (..not 'spamming' the thread but.. here's a really-simple but fun online one, to escape from werk / kids to learn-from, etc..
http://www.laserium.com/cycloid/ Programming by R. Hipschman..
njoy...
j

[cfavreau]

Neato! Thanks for pointing that out. Had to update my Java because of it...

[james]

dchammonds (Dean) of this forum did some cool math generated stuff a while ago....

http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php?board=9.0

James.

[Cookie Cutter]

Good stuff Tribble, having a few problems like there is always a "motor" running if i set all to 0 by typing there is nothing but if i set a 1 in M1 I should get a circle but it is mixing with something else, also the slider doesn't update to the new number correctly.
Another nice addition would be able to use the mouse scroll wheel to change the figures (that should be also highlighted).
Floating point numbers would be good too to get those really hard to find harmonics.
I also built one of these with 4 motors in the early 80's with an old surplus card reader HeNe laser and reveled at that 4th dimension where you could turn that rotating globe on its side and go through the middle.
All in all its a nice piece of show software on its own, without 50k+ galvos though the motors/mirrors method still wins hands down for a high resolution Spirograph.
Don't stop now though this is still going somewhere.

[BlueFang]

I see that this is a rather old thread, however I too find this project extremely fascinating - not only because of how cool Spirographs are, but also because this is a Java app that works perfectly on OS X, and that is quite rare in the Laser geek world.

Anyway, any progress made with the color version? Any chance of making this an open source project and throwing the source on GitHub? I am a rather experienced developer (with tons of GUI experience) and would love to build this out further like adding support for a turtle like graphics system (L-system), so things like Hilbert Curves and other fractal images would be possible.