Laser Projector (Red, Green, Purple) "Laser 3D Party Light" from Spencer's

[mixedgas]

Its not that I don't mind hacking. Its just the degree of difficulty on getting the RGB working on the Spence machine is five stars.
I could easily do it if I opto-isolated the inputs, calculated out the parts for a grounded gate mosfet interface for an inverted rail, etc.. Kind of not worth the effort for a low speed, on/off modulation with no compensation for the turn on time lag and turn off tails on the green laser.
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The chips used are a fixed current eight pin Chinese LED driver, and they ran the driver off the minus rail instead of the hot rail in my unit. Yet the microprocessor is off the positive 5V rail. Go figure. The driver, if ran off a positive rail, would have an active low, inverted, turn off input.. So a very sensitive grounded gate mosfet circuit of some sort was used to interface between the chip and the microprocessor. Its a mess. Just getting your finger near the circuit board turns off the lasers, which are normally on.
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I used to travel for the day job, and bought a Spencers projector as a joke, so I could have a tiny digitizing projector that would fit in the single carry-on I was allowed for company travel. I was on the road up to 30 days at a time, so it seemed like a good idea. The galvos are fine, actually fairly fast, but the diode drivers are a slow, crude, minimal cost one trick pony.
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I'm damn good at what I do, and if I found their diode driver setup difficult to hack, well, its difficult to hack.

Steve

[czyzczyz]

If you're finding their setup difficult to hack -- I'd likely find it impossible. I'm no engineer, and often find myself having to look up Ohm's law just to double-check that I haven't mis-remembered which variable is which. I'm not interested in buying even a $143 projector and then blowing it up trying to feed it some exacting voltage. I'm just intrigued by the idea of putting together a cheap learning experience, a very non-professional but fun system.

I've been an occasional lurker on these and the laserpointer forums for years, always thinking it'd be fun to get into RGB laser projection, but also recognizing that much of the activity seemed both incredibly complicated and costly. But this projector looks like it just might be the starter platform that kicks me over the threshold, particularly given that it can be used out-of-the-box to display custom images. That would be encouraging right off the bat.

Based on yours and other forum posts, I'm thinking that a possible progression with this projector might be the following three phases -- each of which adds additional functionality to the device:

• Phase 1: Run the projector off the SD card, but replace the violet laser with blue.
  
  required hardware:
  
  1. Spencers Laser 3D Party Light ($143 after 20% discount code)
  2. 450nm Osram PL450B Diode In Copper Module W/Leads & Three Element Glass Lens $42.00 (I can solder into place the required resistor, I just wouldn't have trusted myself to come up with the right resistor value --thanks DogP for writing that up)
  
  possibly-useful software:
  
  1. LaserShowGen software $24.90
  2. Zilda ILDA file viewer
  3. LFI Player
  
  That's already pretty cool, an RGB laser projector that displays custom art for ~$200!
  
  
• Phase 2: Computer-controlled DAC
  
  DAC:
  
  1. Riya Lite DAC (~$100)
  
  other useful hardware:
  
  1. ILDA breakout board (internal molex version -- £6.50)
     At least, I think this might be useful. I suppose I could just spend a little extra time soldering connections to an old DB25 port.
  
  software:
  
  1. Spaghetti ($89 or mentioned as something that can be purchased with the Riya Lite at a discount)
  
  Phase 2's additional $100+ makes it an RGB laser projector controllable via computer, capable of playing laser shows from standard software, or maybe some experimental realtime fun via OpenLase? Intriguing.
  
  
• Phase 3: Replace diode drivers
  
  hardware:
  
  1. 3x Flexmod P3.2 ($36/ea)
  2. BBE's driver ($24/ea)
  
  Still researching drivers, so there's probably much hardware in the price range that I've yet to discover. Unless I'm misunderstanding -- replacing the diode drivers would allow for faster toggling of the lasers on-off state, but would also allow for analog control of the brightness of each color. That'd undoubtedly be worth another ~$100 upgrade.
  

[james]

--Has anyone purchased a LaserBoy correction amp kit from Innovision?

The only place you can get a LaserBoy Correction Amp kit is from me!

http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php?topic=561.0

PM me to get one.

Look here for some good information about it:

http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php?...sg6546#msg6546

The LaserBoy application can also be used to prepare files for those SD card readers.

James.

[mixedgas]

Innolasers sells correction amp boards.

Steve

[james]

As far as I know my design is the only one out there that incorporates 5V zener diode protection to prevent over voltage on the color signals and it also uses parts values that allow you to adjust to the tightest precision of offset voltage nullification.

It's also the only design that uses a variable negative voltage regulator for the offset voltage, allowing you to adjust for the widest range of offset voltages found on any computer sound device; from about 1.2VDC to well over 2.5VDC.

So it works with any sound chip, including the C-Media 6206 and the CM 106 and just about any PCI sound card that can be DC modified.

It allows for as much as 10X voltage gain on all channels.

It has extra thick PC board traces and a whole-board ground plane on a super easy to build, yet very compact single sided board.

It has a real 25 pin ILDA ribbon header with all pins either with the proper signals or ground on them, plus a current limited +5V shutter voltage on pin 13 and the interlock between 4 and 17.

Plus, it is a REAL LaserBoy Correction Amp from the original source.

For $40 plus shipping for the whole kit, why would you want to buy a knock-off?

If you contact me to order a kit, YOU'LL ACTUALLY GET ONE!

And... You'll get all the tech support from me that you need to make it work.

I also sell bare boards for $8 each plus shipping.

James.

[JohnYayas]

I like the idea of plush shipping.

[james]

I like the idea of plush shipping.

I pack them very nicely.

I also sell assembled boards and complete USB LaserBoy DACs (ready to use).

I do not accept payment until your package is ready to ship.

James.

[czyzczyz]

Sorry, forgot to include LaserBoy as an option in that list.

I'm a little confused about the advantages or disadvantages of the LaserBoy or Riya or other DACs. LaserBoy and Riya Lite seem like the devices that fall within my admittedly-low price range for such experimentation (I reserve the right to get serious about lasers at a later date).

For LaserBoy I'd be buying a USB sound device, and then doing a whole bunch of soldering and hooking things together and configuring. $20 for the sound card, $40 + shipping for the Laserboy kit, and then my time to put it together. I love that it's open-source and that it might be possible to run it from a Raspberry Pi2 in the projector. I'm a little worried that I might mess up the assembly process and have a difficult time figuring out my errors since I don't have an oscilloscope handy.

With a Riya Lite I guess it'd be a buy and forget operation. I've read that the Riya is more of a "real" DAC for driving laser galvos (I'm not sure what this realness would actually mean in terms of ease-of-use or reliability).

I don't know if there's a difference in expected output from the two devices –or a difference in output that would be appreciable on a projector of this quality.

It does seem like the soundcard route is both more hacky and also may be more future-proof since the software is open-source and drivers will probably always be available for that common sound chip. It also may be more likely to be able to be shoehorned into working with openlase, processing, lasermame(?), and other open-source projects. But I could be wrong.

I left LaserShark out for now as it looks to be dual laser, and we've got 3 in this system.

[swamidog]

my suggestion would be to go with a dac that supports a timeline / live laser show controller. i use LSX (which supports riya, among other dacs), but there are also options such as pangolin's quickshow (comes bundled with fb3 dac), spaghetti, dynamics, medialase, etc.

laserboy software is powerful, but i found the interface to be difficult and if you're interested in doing show sequencing beyond just making ilda files or short animations, it may not be suitable.. i'm sure james can add some input.

Sorry, forgot to include LaserBoy as an option in that list.

I'm a little confused about the advantages or disadvantages of the LaserBoy or Riya or other DACs. LaserBoy and Riya Lite seem like the devices that fall within my admittedly-low price range for such experimentation (I reserve the right to get serious about lasers at a later date).

For LaserBoy I'd be buying a USB sound device, and then doing a whole bunch of soldering and hooking things together and configuring. $20 for the sound card, $40 + shipping for the Laserboy kit, and then my time to put it together. I love that it's open-source and that it might be possible to run it from a Raspberry Pi2 in the projector. I'm a little worried that I might mess up the assembly process and have a difficult time figuring out my errors since I don't have an oscilloscope handy.

With a Riya Lite I guess it'd be a buy and forget operation. I've read that the Riya is more of a "real" DAC for driving laser galvos (I'm not sure what this realness would actually mean in terms of ease-of-use or reliability).

I don't know if there's a difference in expected output from the two devices –or a difference in output that would be appreciable on a projector of this quality.

It does seem like the soundcard route is both more hacky and also may be more future-proof since the software is open-source and drivers will probably always be available for that common sound chip. It also may be more likely to be able to be shoehorned into working with openlase, processing, lasermame(?), and other open-source projects. But I could be wrong.

I left LaserShark out for now as it looks to be dual laser, and we've got 3 in this system.

[james]

LaserBoy is what it is and it does what you make of it.

It has been the introduction to development for LOTS of other DIY laser apps.

It's a great proof of concept platform, since it reads and writes all flavors of ILDA.

It reads (and sort of writes) DXF files and directories full of DXF files.

It reads and writes LaserBoy Formatted Wave Files with proper color, blanking and framing.

It also reads generic wave files from any other source, including ADAT transcriptions.

Another very nice feature which I personally think is not used enough is that it reads and writes plain ASCII text files in an easy to read and write table format.

It can also be used to create all kinds of animated special effects on individual frames, a number of selected frames or a whole frame set. If you set up a C++ compiler, you can write your own effects.

I'm also very engaged with working with other people and if you have any questions about it, I'm usually very glad to help.

As far as the LaserBoy DAC is concerned, I think everyone should have at least one!

It plays freakin' waves! You can't get any more generic and platform independent than that!

It's great for playing ADAT show transcriptions; with stereo audio.

And there is a driver out there that makes it look like a real-time laser DAC.

There are a number of laser applications that know how to stream to a sound card.

Modifying the sound card and building the correction amp is not difficult at all.

I've tried to make the process as easy as possible and again, I will offer whatever help I can.

There is a certain sense of satisfaction that comes with knowing that you understand everything about your laser projection system, because you built it with your own hands.

James.