CYGN-B

[laserist]

Greg is a forensic laserist!

[Greg]

Greg is a forensic laserist!

Leave no stern tome interred.

[ronhip]

Brian,

If you are referring to Charlie's star projector, we hosted that monster at Lone Mountain College (now USF) for a while when we temporarily (for 2.5 years) lost Morrison to AVI (a whole ugly story...) At least at that point, it was not controlled by data, but rather from a small aux box at the laser console. That data was never used at the Morrison Planetarium either.

Greg,

That was documentation I wrote up myself. The sheet that Brian posted was too difficult to use if you needed to bring up something quickly. My note was basically a crib sheet for my use. I don't remember if I coined those names for the dogloids or if I heard them from Scott Anderson, but they are appropriate and descriptive.

Ron

I expect that is exactly correct. However, Charlie's projector sounds like it was an awesome and unique instrument, about which detail is sparse. Spotting activity in the data that may have been related to that device could bring a few bits of the light of knowledge to where there is currently none.

[laserist]

Charlie's star projector was an x/y table with a disk that could be rotated between an arc lamp and projection lamp. The star field was random, and may have been film - I can't recall. I think I remember that the motors needed to be running whenever the lamp was on or the star plate could be damaged.

[Greg]

Charlie's star projector was an x/y table with a disk that could be rotated between an arc lamp and projection lamp. The star field was random, and may have been film - I can't recall. I think I remember that the motors needed to be running whenever the lamp was on or the star plate could be damaged.

That says a lot about what it was. If I read that correctly, the star plate could be rotated between an arc lamp and projection... screen? Not a second lamp. As well as being an efficient generator of heat, it's easy to imagine how good that would have looked as a complement to the laser chorus during some of the swooping view effects L was good at. Some heads had it good back then. Unknown so far is an idea of the size of the star plate, and how much of it was exposed in a view.

Speaking of what I'm unofficially calling a swooping view, it wasn't a specific waveform or piece of hardware. Rather a combination of show elements sometimes including diffractive material to give the audience a sense of spaceship reaching the bottom of an arc and pulling up, as it were. I remember this swooping view business used most effectively in the number Rock and Roll by Zep. This number is one of many classics which have been preserved on hard disk and are waiting to be dropped into multabela for some entertaining results.

[laserist]

As I remember the star plate was about 18" in diameter.

[ronhip]

The star projector occupied a full 19" rack with the lens on the top pointing up, and a mirror throwing the image forward. It was noisy and HOT with that zillion Watt Xenon lamp light source. If memory serves, the star plate was as Brian described and made of drilled metal. I believe we could stop it to create a stable star field for slower numbers ("I'm Not In Love" by 10CC for instance???) That projector was a total kludge, but produced a nice star field.

I almost came to blows with Charlie over that projector. Opening night at Lone Mountain, I hadn't gotten ANY time to practice the show. Charlie was tinkering with the star projector and insisted that I help him in spite of my lack of preparation for the show. I insisted that I HAD to practice. The show was in only a couple hours and it was a show I had never performed. He told me that "Maybe we picked the wrong person to run this show." I could only turn around and walk away I was so mad at him.We managed to patch things up. The show went on!

Ron

As I remember the star plate was about 18" in diameter.

[laserist]

I thought Charlie was tough and fair and a great guy. I didn't know him well, but he set up me going to Thanksgiving dinner with his family in Maryland when I did shows at the Smithsonian. At the same time I've only met Ron once and I'm absolutely sure they hired the right guy.

[Greg]

I believe we could stop it to create a stable star field for slower numbers ("I'm Not In Love" by 10CC for instance???)

Now that you mention it, I always preferred stars on the dome not moving faster than they do in real life. I enjoyed the gentle 10CC number which used dimple tube for the verses and fiber turret zoom and sparkle for the interstitial. And that strange segue between Not In Love and Sahara of Snow is such a pleasure to be lost in.

On and off the hunt for sources of noise in multabela. The noise in the joy pot signals is present in the +5V supplied by bela. However this may be due to usb power supply performance. Testing the cheap chinese +5V supplies I had bought for such a use showed ripple when tested no load. A different approximately 5V supply looked flat on the oscilloscope, and when applied to the joysticks, all noise went away. With a bit of code including Roj's damping algorithm, the joysticking looks beautiful. Bringing up and testing the six pushbuttons that use the bela digital I/O pins to give real time input from the laserist to the software engine revealed one broken button and one un-soldered connection on the harness. Finally, the troublesome hiccupping noise that stayed on red when the two wire wrap bela to ilda boards were swapped, and also when bela devices were swapped turned out to be 3 of the 7 ports on the powered usb hub I bought for this purpose are too noisy in some way. Oh well, the four channels are working now. May I add that the chopper effect brings back the feel and look of the slotted can chopper quite effectively. Yellow becomes obviously not true yellow though. Colormod is not doing the four discrete colors thing that the RYGB to RGB colormod circuit does, but that is a mode of colormod operation that will be easily duplicated in the software. By the way the actual RYGB to RGB colormod circuit is now redundant and has been removed from the 6b cycloid generators rebuild.


All good news. That's now it for the hardware until the plot of this story evolves through the 12 available bela analog outs and back into the cycloid generation 6B circuits which basically are the spiral, digital offset, and danube boards. Then and there may we look forward to seeing some of the most interesting parts of the story of all. Meaning, cycloids that really look alive with the music due to the art and genius of Ivan's choreographers and hardware designers.


Much is now to happen in software, which should be easier and less time consuming than what I have been plugging away at for a while. 352 gains and enables are working as seen in the previously posted Tubes number. Needed is a port of the 352 offsets generating code which exists in the 352 visualizer / inspector software. Then we'll watch some of Lightyears beginning with the ringing clocks following On The Run jumping into Rock Around The Clock. I can tell you already Twist And Shout is hilarious, And I can't wait to see Good Vibrations. Has anyone noticed there is a part in Good Vibrations that suddenly turns into One Of These Days for a few bars? I thought the show tape had been spliced the first time I heard it.

[lasermaster1977]

Now that you mention it, I always preferred stars on the dome not moving faster than they do in real life. I enjoyed the gentle 10CC number which used dimple tube for the verses and fiber turret zoom and sparkle for the interstitial. And that strange segue between Not In Love and Sahara of Snow is such a pleasure to be lost in.

On and off the hunt for sources of noise in multabela. The noise in the joy pot signals is present in the +5V supplied by bela. However this may be due to usb power supply performance. Testing the cheap chinese +5V supplies I had bought for such a use showed ripple when tested no load. A different approximately 5V supply looked flat on the oscilloscope, and when applied to the joysticks, all noise went away. With a bit of code including Roj's damping algorithm, the joysticking looks beautiful. Bringing up and testing the six pushbuttons that use the bela digital I/O pins to give real time input from the laserist to the software engine revealed one broken button and one un-soldered connection on the harness. Finally, the troublesome hiccupping noise that stayed on red when the two wire wrap bela to ilda boards were swapped, and also when bela devices were swapped turned out to be 3 of the 7 ports on the powered usb hub I bought for this purpose are too noisy in some way. Oh well, the four channels are working now. May I add that the chopper effect brings back the feel and look of the slotted can chopper quite effectively. Yellow becomes obviously not true yellow though. Colormod is not doing the four discrete colors thing that the RYGB to RGB colormod circuit does, but that is a mode of colormod operation that will be easily duplicated in the software. By the way the actual RYGB to RGB colormod circuit is now redundant and has been removed from the 6b cycloid generators rebuild.


All good news. That's now it for the hardware until the plot of this story evolves through the 12 available bela analog outs and back into the cycloid generation 6B circuits which basically are the spiral, digital offset, and danube boards. Then and there may we look forward to seeing some of the most interesting parts of the story of all. Meaning, cycloids that really look alive with the music due to the art and genius of Ivan's choreographers and hardware designers.


Much is now to happen in software, which should be easier and less time consuming than what I have been plugging away at for a while. 352 gains and enables are working as seen in the previously posted Tubes number. Needed is a port of the 352 offsets generating code which exists in the 352 visualizer / inspector software. Then we'll watch some of Lightyears beginning with the ringing clocks following On The Run jumping into Rock Around The Clock. I can tell you already Twist And Shout is hilarious, And I can't wait to see Good Vibrations. Has anyone noticed there is a part in Good Vibrations that suddenly turns into One Of These Days for a few bars? I thought the show tape had been spliced the first time I heard it.

Beautimus, Bela beautimus!