Build Your Own Line Laser For 3D Scanning

March 2, 2012 by Mike Nathan 32 Comments

diy-line-laser

[Valentin] wanted to experiment with 3D scanning some objects he had around the house, but says he didn’t want to buy a line laser for the project since they are pretty expensive. Fortunately, he had some random components sitting in his parts bin, and he was able to build his own line laser without spending a ton of money.

His tutorial actually covers two different methods of building line lasers, both of which use parts that you likely have on hand already.

His first build involves gluing a small square mirror to a flat platform, which he then mounted on a salvaged DC motor. Once the motor starts spinning, the cheap laser pointer he has aimed at the mirror draws a perfect line across whatever medium he is scanning.

His second line laser uses parts donated from an old hard drive that he no longer used. He removed the drive’s read head from the chassis and mounted a small mirror on the actuator arm before firing up his laser. With the laser aimed at the mirror, he applied an unspecified AC current to the motor, which caused it to oscillate and draw a line similar to his first setup.

While they might not be professionally-built scanning lasers, [Valentin’s] efforts produced some decent images, as you can see on his site.

Continue reading to see a short video of his DC motor laser line in action.

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Hackaday Links: February 26, 2012

February 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Wii Nunchuk controlled Monotron

Adding a bit of motion control to your music synthesizer turns out to be pretty easy. Here’s an example of a Wii Nunchuk used to control a Monotron. [Thanks John]

Hackers on the Moon and other space related goals

Yep apparently a non-government backed expedition to the moon is in the works. But you’ve got to walk before you can crawl and one of the first parts of the process is to launch a hackerspace-backed satellite network called the Hackerspace Global Grid. Check out this interview with one of the initiative’s founders [Hadez]. [Thanks MS3FGX]

Laser pointers and frosted glass

We were under the impression that a laser show required finely calibrated hardware. But [Jas Strong] proves us wrong by making pretty colors with laser pointers and slowly rotating glass. [Thanks Mike]

MSP430 Twitter Ticker

[Matt] built a Twitter ticker using the TI Launchpad. It works on an LED matrix or OLED display along with a Python script which handles the API.

Android floppy drive hack

[Pedro] shows us how he reads floppy disks with his Android tablet. The hardware includes a docking station to add a USB port to the tablet, as well as a hub and USB floppy drive. On the software side of things an Android port of DOSbox does the rest.

Laser Spirograph Exhibit Repair And Upgrade

February 20, 2012 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Bill Porter] continues finding ways to help out at the local museum. This time he’s plying his skills to fix a twenty-year-old exhibit that has been broken for some time. It’s a laser spirograph which had some parts way past their life expectancy.

He started by removing all of the electronics from the cabinet for further study in his lair. He examined the signal generator which when scoped seemed to be putting out some very nice sine waves as it should. From there he moved on to the galvos which tested way off of spec and turned out to be the offending elements.

A bit of searching around the interwebs and [Bill] figured out an upgrade plan for the older parts. But since he was at it, why not add some features at the same time? He rolled in a port so that just a bit of additional circuitry added later will allow shapes and logos to be drawn on the screen. One of his inspirations for this functionality came from another DIY laser projector project.

Take a look at the results of the repair process in the clip after the break.

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Laser-triggered Camera Rig Update: 2011 Version

January 13, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

[Fotoopa] keeps churning out new iterations of his laser-triggered camera rig. This is his latest, which he calls the 2011 setup. Regular readers will remember that we just covered a different version back in November; that one was the 2010 rendition. It had two DSLR cameras offset by 90 degrees with mirrors to face forward. This time around he has gone back to the single camera setup which was what he used on the first and second versions seen way back in 2008.

Whew, that’s a lot of links to specialty DSLR hardware. Let’s bring it back to this newest model (the link at the top). The biggest improvement is the shutter delay between when the laser beam is tripped and the image is take. [Fotoopa] reports that he’s managed to reduce that time down to 3.3 milliseconds. This is thanks to an external shutter replacement which improves on the stock shutter’s 52 millisecond delay.

For those that are seeing this for the first time. [Fotoopa] uses this rig to photograph insects in motion. A laser trip wire is responsible for triggering the shutter, and it does so with stunning results!

More Laser Shooting Range Goodness; Now With Duckies

January 11, 2012 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

Here’s another project that reminds us of the shooting games at a carnival. This was actually inspired by the video game Duck Hunt, and was undertaken as a class project between four students at San Jose State University. It uses moving glass targets that look like rubber duckies. The player shoot sensors at their base with a laser-tipped gun. A direct hit is indicated by the duck glowing blue.

[Lananh Nguyen] is a Business Marketing major, but he’s also minoring in Studio Art and has been blowing glass for years. We think he’ll always have a side job making and selling glass because those ducks look fantastic. [Michael] and [Chris] worked together, building out the oscillating platform which moves the targets back and forth, as well as wiring up light sensors to the Arduino. A green laser diode was added to an acrylic gun to complete the project. Check out the game play video after the break to see how it all comes together.

If you missed the other laser shooting range when we featured it last week, you’ll want to revisit that project which uses tin cans as targets.

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Full Color Laser TV

December 31, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

Back in 2001, [Helmar] made an awesome monochrome video display out of a red laser pointer and a spinning 18-sided mirror. Blue and green lasers are much less expensive than they were a decade ago, so [Helmar] decided to go full color with his laser projector. (In German, so fire up Chrome or get the Google translation)

The ancient website for [Helmar]’s green-only projector goes over the principles of operation. A single laser shines onto a multi-faceted polygonal mirror. This is reflected onto another mirror that provides the reflection for each line in a frame of video. Earlier this year, [Helmar] hacked up a red and blue laser to complement the preexisting green laser. The end result is an RGB projector powered by friggin’ lasers.

As far as we can tell, the projector only has composite input; the attached DVD player provides all the signaling for that. Amazingly, [Helmar] didn’t use a microcontroller for the circuitry. All the electronics are simple logic gates. Really amazing if you ask us.

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A Real, Laser-based 3D Display

November 20, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 43 Comments

3D display technology is fairly limited. Most 3D displays out there rely on either prisms refracting light from a normal flat-panel display, or shooting lasers into some sort of space-filling device. A few researchers in Japan went with a more unconventional method of making a 3D display that actually lives up to the promises of the displays seen in Star Wars.

From the coverage of this display we’ve found, the green laser demonstration is a scaled-down version that uses water as the display medium. There’s a short clip that shows a red, green, and blue laser projecting a few white voxels into mid-air. The video of both these demonstrations is a bit jumpy, but that’s probably because of the difference in frame rate between the display and camera.

We’re not really sure how the “plasma excitations of air molecules with focused beams” actually work, or even how to control 50,000 of these dots at 15 frames per second. If you’ve got any idea how to build one of these guys, leave a note in the comments.

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