Building An Automated Laser Turret Targeting System

August 25, 2015 by James Hobson 11 Comments

Last year, [Alvaro] built a laser turret robot for the DEFCONBOTs competition. It worked pretty well, but this year, he decided to step it up a notch. Now instead of moving the entire robot laser array, he’s using galvanometers to move only the laser — he’s essentially built a mini laser projector.

A galvanometer is basically a very sensitive ammeter that moves — it can also be used as a very precise electro-mechanical actuator, for say, moving a tiny mirror. As you can imagine, you can actually build home-made galvanometers — but it’s really not that easy. Instead, [Alvaro] opted to order a few laser show controllers on eBay, and hack his way to a solution — we approve.

Wiring up the galvanometers and making some circuitry for them was the easy part. The tricky part is automating the system.

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Vector Laser Projector Is A Lesson In Design Processes

September 20, 2014 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

After two years of EE coursework, [Joshua Bateman] and [Adam Catley] were looking for a fun summer project. Instead of limping along with the resources they could put together themselves, they managed to get their school — Bristol University — to foot the bill!

Now Uni’s aren’t in the habit of just forking over funding for no reason, and we thing that’s why the two did such a great job of documenting their work. We’re used to seeing blogs devoted to one project, but this one has a vast portfolio of every piece of work that went into the build. Before any assembly started they drew out design diagrams to form the specification, laid out the circuit and the board artwork, and even worked out how the software would function in order to make sure the hardware met all their needs.

When the parts arrived the work of hand-populating the surface mount boards began. This is reflected in the fast-motion video they recorded including this clip which features a 176 pin LQFP. The driver board is a shield for a Raspberry Pi which drives the Galvanometers responsible for the X and Y movements of the mirror.

The video below shows off their success and the blog makes a great resource to point to when applying for work once a freshly minted diploma is in hand.

What do you think the next step should be? We’d advocate for a trip to crazy-town like this RGB laser projector we saw several years ago. Of course the same classic vector games we saw on Thursday would be equally awesome without alerting this hardware at all.

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Laser Projected Christmas Lights

August 1, 2014 by Bryan Cockfield 30 Comments

It’s August, and of course that means that it’s time for retail stores to put up their Christmas decorations! But seriously, if you’re going to do better than the neighbors you need to start now. [Joey] already has his early start on the decorations, with a house-sized light show using LED strips and a laser projector that he built last Christmas.

What started off as a thought that it would be nice to hang a wreath over the garage soon turned into a laser projector that shows holiday-themed animations on the front of the house. The project also includes a few RGB LED strips which can match the colors displayed by the projector. The LEDs are powered from a custom-built supply that is controlled by a laptop, and the program that runs on the computer averages the colors from the video signal going to the projector which lights up the LED strips to match the projected image. This creates an interesting effect similar to some projects that feature home theater ambient lighting.

The only major problem [Joey] came across was having to account for the lasers’ motion in the projected patterns, which was causing the computer to read false values. This and a few other laser-related quirks were taken care of with a bit of programming to make sure the system was functioning properly. After that it was a simple matter of attaching the projector to the roof and zip-tying the LED strips to the eaves of the house.

The projector is weatherproof, has survived one harsh winter already, and can be up and running for any holiday. With Halloween right around the corner, this could be a great way to spice up some trick-or-treating. Check out the video after the break to see this setup in action.

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Hacking A Disco Laser

September 18, 2013 by James Hobson 18 Comments

hacked laser disco

[Mark] was looking for a cheap disco laser projector for parties, and he found one. Unfortunately for him, the advertised features were a bit lacking. The “sound activation mode” was merely an on off circuit, as opposed to it actually being controlled by the music — he set out to fix this.

Taking the unit apart revealed a very convenient design for hacking. All of the components were connected to the main PCB by connectors, meaning the laser driver board was completely separate! He replaced the PCB completely using a prototyping board, an Arduino pro mini, a microphone with a simple preamp, a rotary encoder, and a MSGEQ7 chip to analyse the levels. Oh, and a MOSFET to control the motor via PWM output. It even ended up being close to the same size as the original!

If you happen to have one of these projectors and want to fix it too, he’s posted the source code and circuit diagram on github.

After the break, check out the before and after video. It’s still a cheap disco laser projector, but at least it works as advertised now!

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Human Asteroids Makes You A Vector Triangle Ship

May 30, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

asteroids

In 1979, [Nolan Bushnell] released Asteroids to the world. Now, he’s playing the game again, only this time with the help of a laser projector and a Kinect that turns anyone sitting on a stool – in this case [Nolan] himself – into everyone’s favorite vector spaceship. It’s a project for Steam Carnival, a project by [Brent Bushnell] and [Eric Gradman] that hopes to bring a modern electronic carnival to your town.

The reimagined Asteroids game was created with a laser projector to display the asteroids and ship on a floor. A Kinect tracks the user sitting and rolling on a stool while a smart phone is the triangular spaceship’s ‘fire’ button. The game is played in a 150 square foot arena, and is able to put anyone behind the cockpit of an asteroid mining triangle.

[Brent] and [Eric] hope to bring their steam carnival to LA and San Francisco next spring, but if they exceed their funding goals, they might be convinced to bring their show east of the Mississippi. We’d love to try it out by hiding behind the score like the original Asteroids and wasting several hours.

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Playing MAME Games On A RGB Laser Projector

March 12, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 28 Comments

Vector based displays were used for arcade games in the ’70s and ’80s. A typical CRT uses raster graphics, which are displayed by deflecting a beam in a grid pattern onto a phosphor. A vector display deflects the beam in lines rather than a full grid, drawing only the needed vectors. Perhaps the best known vector game is the original Asteroids.

[Jeremy] built up a RGB laser projector, and wanted to run some classic arcade titles on it. He started off by using the XMAME emulator, but had to modify it to communicate with the laser and reduce flicker on the display.

To control the laser, a modified version of OpenLase was used. This had to be enhanced to support RGB color. The modified sources for both the MAME emulator and OpenLase are available on Github.

[Jeremy]’s friend, [Steve], even got a vector based game that he wrote working on the system. “World War vi” is a shoot-em-up battle about the vi and emacs text editors.

The results of the build are shown in a series of videos after the break.

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Analog Scope Stands In To For Laser Light Show

April 14, 2011 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

[Joey] likes to dabble in laser projection, building his own hardware and writing the software that drives it. One way that he tests his setup is by replacing the laser assembly with an analog oscilloscope. This allows him to ensure that the driver board is receiving data from the software, and translating it into the correct electrical signals to drive the motors controlling the mirrored redirection of the laser beam.

In the video linked above [Joey] walks us through this process. It starts by connecting scope probes to the digital-analog-converter card that outputs image data for the projector. From there the XY mode is used to map the two channels perpendicular to each other; the motors that these signals are meant to control have mirrors that also move perpendicular to one another. After adjusting the scale and the timebase you will see the pattern the laser dot is meant to trace.

[Joey] entered this in a Tectronix contest. There’s plenty of other interesting entries to browse though. If have an entry that you’d like to see featured, or if you come across any other interesting stuff, don’t forget to tip us off.