WICKED LASERS LASERDOCK DONGLE, A REAL GAME CHANGER. News & Reviews.

[andyf97]

The WickedLasers Laserdock DONGLE seams to be a little bit of a revolution happening in the industry which was initially crowd funded. Hugely very cleverly marketed, very well received, well designed by an international consortium, manufactured in China and low priced. Add to that the rapid falling cost of Laser diodes and cheap reasonable quality Laser show scanners; I feel soon every kid in town could own a pretty decent spec 7.6W RGB Laser projector. Not great news for us show guys or Laser show software producers but nice to see a true success story emerging which could give birth to a whole new demand for Larger and more professional Laser Projectors and software.

This device might end up as popular as a raspberry pi, getting cross platform developed and have a massive world wide following just like the Raspberry pi does. And once something has a massive following, soon after there will be loads of new Laser show applications getting developed. When the Network Version gets released it will be a REAL! Game changer.


A LaserDock is a Laser Projector with a LaserDock Dongle built inside which connects via USB. These cost $399 but are not yet available in the US.



A LaserDock Dongle is a USB Compliant Device ( Interface DAC Controller ) which connects your computer to any standard ILDA Laser projector via an ILDA cable and cost just $99. A nighty Nine dollar Laser show controller with software, who would have ever expected that.

Inside the LaserDock Dongle


LaserDock Dongle Cool designed little box.




Some Links for more info
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/l...stem-music-edm

http://www.wickedlasers.com/laserdock




Post your views and reviews or other comments of this little gem here.

[carlos3621]

Review coming!, once i get around to playing around with this toy!
Btw: Is the audio input, limited to mp3's directly playing from your computer?
Or can you input a line in audio source, to manipulate the output live??

[frostypaw]

I quite liked it, just bought the dac but I worry how well it'd work with the prefab projector as it's much more impressive when it can draw straight. The patterns vary in how well they seem to respond to the music, some are excellent and distracting for long periods others can seem quite messy. They vary from tunnels to mirrored fractal edges to animated dancers - the basic selection is not bad and it'll be interesting to see what comes next if the suggested add-on packs appear.

The instructions suggest that playing music from your computer is best but it will take external input via a microphone - not tested this though. There are several supplementary animation options to make the patterns pulse or change colour to the beat and some basic laser output controls. The colour controls and test circles are pretty nice tbh, that works - but the optimisation controls are lacking and tails abound.

It freaks out a bit when the patterns breach the borders.

I then started playing with Maxwell and have been thoroughly distracted since.

[BlueFang]

I have one of the actual projectors - and I must say, I am actually quite impressed. I mean, I don't really have any other $400 projectors to compare it with - but to me, the beam is much tighter and brighter than I would have expected from a $400 projector.

That being said, it is using PT-20K scanners - which is probably the weak point of the system.

The PT-20k specs show 20kpps @ 18° , 35kpps @ 4°-5°.

I haven't gotten the courage up yet to push the scanners to 30k - but that is mostly because I only had it for one day before letting a VDJ friend "check it out" - and I haven't seen it since... Last I heard he was showing it off to more of his VDJ friends - and, well, it is pretty dang popular.

[White-Light]

Some negatives:

1. Scanning quality looks poor (assuming it's not the camera), - the circles are open at one end (although in fairness what do you expect for the price!)

2. Supplied no estop - I'm a little confused how the safety interlock protects you by plugging in a defeat loop!

3. I see this leading to greater regulation. This review gives the impression (to me at least) that you can simply plug it in, smoke the room and run bachelor parties at home with atmospherics. I didn't notice a mention that 1W of laser is extremely dangerous if shone directly at any audience especially in a typical sized home.

The positive, is for hobbyists aware of the dangers of a Class 4 laser, this gives a cheap way into the laser display hobby, and from previous posts appears to have some great, free to download sound to light software.

[andyf97]

That being said, it is using PT-20K scanners - which is probably the weak point of the system.

The PT-20k specs show 20kpps @ 18° , 35kpps @ 4°-5°.

Considering it exists an ILDA spec of 12Kpps & 30Kpps , I consider 20Kpps should be fine for the beam show applications it is designed for. It is not intended to draw company logos or other graphics.

[JohnYayas]

Considering it exists an ILDA spec of 12Kpps & 30Kpps , I consider 20Kpps should be fine for the beam show applications it is designed for. It is not intended to draw company logos or other graphics.

Are you making this up or did Wicked Lasers say this?

[norty303]

It's only designed for graphics as far as I can tell. No beam show content at all. (I own a dongle)
Al, there is a page all about safety you have to click through before you can access the software download.

[daderaide]

I just received my dongle a few days ago and have been toying around with it a bit since then. Before I took the chance on it, I read as much info as I could find on it here and elsewhere on the net and had high hopes. I have to say that I'm definitely disappointed.

As a comment to andyf97, I'm not sure how you can claim it was intended for beams when the visualization software it's designed to work directly with doesn't have any beam effects and is 100% graphics. On that note, in the software there is no way to change the scan speed. So on my PT-40 scanners, I can't increase the scan speed higher than the default. Which when you're used to 40K, 20K looks really aggravating. There is also no way to edit the optimization settings and on my projector the visualizations all have little tails.

Most of my complaints are related to the software, which is the only reason I bought the dongle. The documentation is really lacking and requires a LOT of sleuthing to figure out. For example, the default setting for color are limited such that I was only getting TTL looking color until I moved the "min" and "max" settings to their extremes. It would be really nice if the folks at wicked laser put together an actual user manual rather than ONLY offering a quick start guide. I understand the desire to make your product look slick and intuitive, but when you put out a product that is designed to work with other people's laser projectors you have to give a little more information. The software has several over quirks also. There is an "effects" drop down menu to choose from with a random setting. While watching the effects loop through i notice some effects that I can't duplicate when selecting the ones provided in the list. Are there extra effects that you just can't choose individually? You also can't select visualizations to be omitted that you don't like. So it's either play through all of them and shuffle, or individually select them one at a time. Some of the visualizations don't look good at all at 20K and others look just fine, but it would be quite cumbersome to continue going back to the computer during a party to change it.

I'm not sure if this next one is cause by software or hardware, but sometimes there will be fully lit white dots connecting different parts of the frame. I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like the blanking points are being drawn white instead of being blanked. But it only does it sometimes. Like, I will select a visualization and it will all of a sudden show the white dots, but if i click to the next visualization, they might still be there, but then I'll click back to the first one I was on and they're gone. It seems random when it happens.

So, my next interest was to try the DAC with Maxwell. Usually, I use an EtherDream and LSX with my projector so that's all I really have experience with to compare it to. The Laserdock DAC with Maxwell seems to run slow or something. The same exact abstract that would look really smooth with the EtherDream at 30K would be a little flickery or slow with the Laserdock. I also noticed that sometimes the DAC seemed to glitch and twitch the image or add strange lines in the middle of drawing the abstract that aren't usually there. They're just little flashes but definitely not there when I use the EtherDream.

As an entry level DAC to use with spaghetti or maxwell, etc. it's a GREAT value! but as a Laser visualizer for someone who already has their own equipment and wants a "hands off" display for parties, it's really not what I was hoping for.

[carlos3621]

I have one of these DAC's too, but haven't had a chance to try it out yet.
Has anyone tried just the DAC, hooked up to a PROPER RGB projector?? just wondering if the output is any better/ cleaner with a solid projector compared to the LaserDock cheapo unit??