Next Florida Laser Enthusiast's Meeting in Orlando on November 8th, 2008!

[flecom]

my ride never showed up

not going to be able to make it... (i cant drive for 3 hours, i WILL fall asleep lol)

[soforene]

You would have thought that the guys would have given a post mortem about the event by now.
Unless something nefarious happened () and they have all vowed never to speak of it.

[Banthai]

hmm you are right buddy

i thought us brits were always reserved .... but we always spend the next week after the event ranting and raving how good it was

just like the first moon landing .... maybe it did not happen...

perhaps what we saw on the stream was just pre recorded and carefully edited footage from previous events put together in such a way that it looked like a live event

what do you think ?


all the best ... Karl

[Banthai]

Another theory is ...

That Bill gave a demonstration of Pangolin Beyond ..... but because of its top secret nature ... he then had to kill everyone to prevent it being leaked


Karl

[soforene]

Hmmmmm.....
All I saw whenever I logged into the live stream was test patterns.
And the venue looked nowhere near as big as the last SELEM.
Perhaps there's something in your conspiracy theories Karl.

What if Pangolin Beyond uses unlicensed nuclear accelerator Backpacks and they crossed the streams !!

Or Tinkerbell put out a Contract on Bill to ensure World Domination of Laserboy and everyone else was caught in the crossfire !!

[buffo]

Hey Everyone;

Just stopped in at a coffee shop here in FLorida so I could post a FLEM update. Unfortunately, I didn't make it back to Chalreston on Sunday like I had planned. My Jeep had other plans! The engine just quit as I was driving back to my mother's house after the event. One minute I was drivinig along just fine, and then without any warning, the engine died. (No spark) I managed to coast into a parking spot at a gas station. Lucky for me, Aaron was following me. He gave me a ride to my Mom's house.

The next day (or should I say, later that same morning), my Mom and I drove back over to where the Jeep was parked and I changed out the ingnition coil. Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem (still no spark), so at that point I decided to have it towed to the Jeep dealership near my Mom's house. They've worked on it before, so hopefully they can get me back on the road soon. Evidently the problem is a short in one of the wiring harnesses that keeps blowing the fuse that feeds both the PCM and the fuel pump. Don't know where the short is though; they're still working on it...

Anyway, about the event... What fun! Paul had some *killer* audio equipment set up. It was louder that the setup we had for SELEM this summer! (The amp stack he brought had 5 amps with a total combined output of 20,000 watts. We only used 1 of the 5 amps, and used it to power 4 separate speaker cabinets.) Soforene, you're right - the venue in Florida is much smaller. It's a room about 40 by 70 feet... So imagine 4000 watts of audio in a room that size!

We also had 4 RGB projectors in attendance, plus a couple odds and ends. DZ managed to get a DVD burner diode extracted from it's sled and installed it in one of the Axiz modules. We also tinkered with my HGM5 a bit, but since I didn't bring the schematics we were unable to troubleshoot the current control circuit. (Maybe next time.) Aaron (allthatwhichis) got his projector put back together, but discovered that his LaserWave blue laser has developed a problem (100 mw laser, but it's only making 40 mw now).

Patrick Murphy was there, and he brought a pair of those Bliss lights. (Basically a 50 mw dpss green laser shooting through a couple holographic optic elements that are counter-rotating.) They create a starfield of hundreds (if not thousands) of beamlets. It makes for a very nice background to display laser graphics on. We shut them off when we started running beamshows, however, as they tended to distract from the beams quite a bit. They really were cool, and some of the members starting thinking about building their own. (The Bliss lights cost $3000 each, but they're aimed and the pro lighting market. A hobbyist could probably make one for a lot less.) In fact, Patrick mentioned that he would like to see ILDA come up with a standard for some static effects like the Bliss starfield projectors, or even Lumia wheels, as those "older" effects are still very cool, yet you don't see them nearly as often now. (Currently the ILDA standard only deals with scanned effects.)

Aaron Bacs was there along with his son. He spent a good bit of time talking with several of the members, while his son enjoyed the shows that were playing. Aaron and I discussed a few different solutions for diverging the beam coming out of the projector to reduce the beam intensity (and thus make it safer for viewing). I'm going to start shopping for lenses when I get back home! We also talked about our plans for SELEM 2009 next August; he may be able to attend that event as well. (woot!)

Bill Benner was there, and he also brought a new Pangolin employee (Jason) with him. Jason is working on adding some new content to the Pangolin website. This was his first Laser Enthusiast's Meeting, and I think he had a really good time. He brought his girlfriend with him, and she had never seen a laser show before, so she was quite impressed. Bill brought some Pangolin shirts, mouse pads, and stickers for everyone. He also helped me get the beat detection engine working in LivePro!. (I had forgotten to install the Winamp Plugin.. D'oh!)

David Zurcher held a drawing for the set of DT-25 scanners that he donated as a door prize, and Mo (Daedal) was the winner! So he's got a new set of galvos to play with. Also, Mo eded up purchasing a Pangolin LD-2000 Intro package at the event, so he got Pango'd! Looking forward to seeing his still-to-be-built projector at SELEM next summer...

Aaron had a big pan of home-made lasagna, and we all pigged out on it. We also had a few cakes and a ton of soft drinks. OneStopLaserShop.com had sent us a check for nearly $80 to help pay for expenses, so half the money went to Aaron to cover the cost of the lasagna and the other half went for drinks and cake. (This money comes from PhotonLexicon purchases. If you tell them you are from PL, you get a 10% discount on your order, *and* they set aside another 10% in a separate fund that goes to help support laser enthusiast meetings.) Also, Amanda and Fred sent us a bunch of diffraction grating samples to give out. Each pack had 2 samples in it - a line grating and a grid grating. The pieces were ~ 2 inches square. We tested them out on a couple different lasers, and they're really cool.

Unbeknownst to us, the city had a Jazz festival planned for the same day that we were there. They started blocking off the streen on the block just north of where we were around 6 PM or so. When we went outside around 7:30 to see what was going on, there were about 1000 people gathered in the street! People had their own little tables and chairs set up, like a tailgate party right in the middle of the street. All the restaurants had tables and chairs set out in the street, and there were several tents and tables set up selling food, beer and wine, mixed drinks, and desserts. In the middle between the two blocks that were roped off, they had a stage set up. They had a 6 piece jazz band playing, and they were pretty good!

So, of course, not to be out-done, we decided to open the front doors on our venue so people could look in and see the lasers running. We placed tables across the entrance to prevent anyone from actually getting close to the doorway, but they could stand on the sidewalk and look through the open doors and see the lasers projecting on the screen we had set up. Paul cranked up the volume on the sound system, and *really* cranked up the fog machines he brought.

The result was a mini-laser show that you could view from the sidewalk as you walked past the building. And nearly 200 people stopped to ask what was going on! Some of them thought that we were part of the Jazz festival (which made no sense since most of the time we had Pink Floyd playing, which is pretty far removed from Jazz)! A few people took a quick look and kept on walking, but lots of people stopped to ask questions and watch the lasers for a while. A few people wanted to go inside, but of course we had to tell them no.

Still, it was amazing how much of a crowd we managed to draw. We only had the doors open for about 90 minutes or so, and yet we figure that around 200 people stopped to take a peek. Pretty cool!

After that, we closed the doors and took down all the tables that we had blocking the entrance, and for the last hour and a half or so we just *cranked* the sound system up as loud as it would go. I think my ears are still ringing... (haha!) But it was truly *thunderous* inside. Paul really liked the "Above" show (which is set to the Blue Man Group tune of the same name). We must have watched it 15 times. The percussion in that song is very tribal, very expressive, and *totally* cool. You can't imagine having 3 RGB projectors playing the same beam show while the music plays so lound that you can feel it in your spleen!

Of course, after it was all over with, we had to pack everything up. That's when I realized that I had locked my keys in the Jeep... (D'oh!) Fortunately, Fred was able to fish a rod through the gap between the door and the frame and push the unlock button for me. (Thanks Fred! A locksmith would have charged me $100 to do the same thing!) Still, it took us nearly an hour to get everything packed up and put away. By that time, we were all pretty tired, so we didn't bother with drinks afterwards. We all wanted to just go home and get some sleep. (And of course, that's when the Jeep decides to shit the bed...)

So it was a great time, marred only by the fact that I'm still stuck in Florida with no transportation. (And no Internet apart from the free WiFi in this coffee shop!) But everyone had a good time. Thanks to everyone that tuned in to the broadcast. Sorry that we didn't participate in the chat all that much - there was a lot going on and we didn't have time...

Adam

[allthatwhichis]

That just about covers it. He forgot about the drunk lady on the bicycle that bumped the street barrier and fell. Beyond that Adam sums it up very well. I for one had a great time even with the poor readings when measuring my blue, which is a 150mW, not a 100mW. Luckily I am already in contact with Marc on the issue.

O, David also amazed me with his laser construction skills. I got a couple of the "150mW" blu-ray diodes in aixiz housings and he had a... "MDXL" flashlight housing and a "rock" driver. I traded him a dead maxyz for it and as I was hooking my computer up... quicker than I could set my computer and projector up he had thrown the components together and had a working 80mW blu-ray handheld module fired up and reaady to go. It has since died... of starvation. I do not have a charger for the 10440 cells that it is being powered by. But I have visited Dealextreme and they are on order along with a few more batterys.

[ImageLight]

Geez Adam, sorry to hear about the jeep, that sucks!

[DZ]

Unless something nefarious happened () and they have all vowed never to speak of it.

Hehe! FLEM was great, big thanks to clandestiny, again, for lending us the venue! And a big congradulations to daedal for winning the DT-25 scanners! Thanks all, I had a great time!

Oh, and thanks to Bill for bringing the nifty "Powered by Pangolin" stickers!

[Anthony]

pango merchandise!!!!! cooooooooooooooooooooooooool

pango powerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr