More home grown laser software

[Agent C]

Hi all!

While everyone is buzzing about new software I guess I might as well throw some pictures from mine up too... It's just proof of concept at the moment, and I doubt it would ever be something people would want to use. The line of thinking is heavily influenced by lasergraph DSP trick films with direct code access and continuous calculations, along with the philosophy that a laser can be played like an instrument with real time modulation. When it gets to something usable I'll put it up for download.

Here are some o-scope pics since my parts for my projector are arriving daily.

[dar303]

Nice! I love it when people use O-scope, makes it all look so sci-fi!
We'll stay tuned!

[heroic]

Killer question:

does it work with the EasyLase DAC?

[Things]

2nd killer question: Does it work on Windowss?

Nice work, though

[Agent C]

Well to answer both questions at once: it's being developed in Java, so it's platform neutral and it does run on my windows desktop. I checked and there are easylase wrappers for java for both windows and mac. I don't own an easylase, but when I make it ready for public consumption it will certainly have support for it. More important atm is that it is starting to support MIDI!

[heroic]

Well to answer both questions at once: it's being developed in Java, so it's platform neutral and it does run on my windows desktop. I checked and there are easylase wrappers for java for both windows and mac. I don't own an easylase, but when I make it ready for public consumption it will certainly have support for it. More important atm is that it is starting to support MIDI!

I guess if you're supporting MIDI, then supporting DMX512 as well shouldn't ought to be too difficult? :-)

You know... if this is in Java, there's no reason we shouldn't run it on something like BeagleBoard and make it a standalone "laser synth" :-)

[Agent C]

Midi interfaces are cheap and the libraries are well developed. I haven't looked but is DMX512 at the same stage? Would the DMX512 be to control aux devices or would it be DMX in? MIDI makes a great control platform because of the variety of devices you can get with sliders, knobs, keys, trigger pads etc - to modulate hooks coded into patterns, and you can go completely overboard with a Lemur controller<drool>.

Beagleboard - yes! Now you're cooking. I think my goal is laser synth software that is more than just a few wave generators as opposed to laser show software. I've been wanting a SBC toy for a while so I may have to pick one of those up. Linux is a really good target OS for lasering because you can build a low-latency kernel. All the big boys use specialized (as far as I know) real time operating systems so you don't have the kernel or other processes taking big time slices and causing your show buffers to run out.

[carmangary]

It sounds like a cool project. I'd be interested in hearing what you learn about MIDI and DMX. I have a MIDI keyboard I would like to use with my software but have not learned how to do it yet. And, I also want to add support to control MIDI and DMX things with it.

[heroic]

Well, DMX is just differential-signalled unidirectional serial at a weird bitrate- it's easy to generate or receive with most microcontrollers, and the controllers are cheap and easy to get hold of. Moreover, they tend to have features that make more sense for lasers, like joysticks for controlling x-y parameters and chase sequences. While this can all be done with a MIDI sequencer, it's easier with DMX.

The logical structure of DMX is that any given DMX bus has 512 "channels", each of which represents a value between 0 and 255. Every device on the bus has a base "channel" number- it could be a single light only using one channel for brightness, or it could be a laser using some large number of channels to control which frame is being shown, what colours are being used, scale, angle, etc.

I was considering using my DMX desk as a controller for a laser synth. It has a bunch of faders, a joystick and a memory for scenes (lists of channel-value pairs triggerable by buttons) that can be sequenced in chases (time or beat driven loops of scenes). It can save and load this stuff from a CF card, but it also has internal memory. It cost me a couple of hundred dollars.

Relatively inexpensive DMX devices are available for USB, and the EasyLase device actually supports DMX in, through and out.

[mixedgas]

And there is a ILDA standard for DMX assignments !

Steve