Lasers, Scanners, Mirrors, FUN ~~~ Photos & Videos

[allthatwhichis]

Hey!!! Maybe a group buy... I got these yesterday... If they work well they have a pack of 100+... Maybe someone, who can speak Greek... can work on a prototype... Damn, we still need software... Hmmm....

 

[jtice]

Looks like what came in that one kit,
nice price also,

So, you can apply different - and + voltages, and it will allow you to position the mirror where you want?

~John

 

[allthatwhichis]

Looks like what came in that one kit,
nice price also,

So, you can apply different - and + voltages, and it will allow you to position the mirror where you want?

~John

I noticed that after a few comparisons. They do seem to be the same galvos. I actually won them, not received them. I was hoping speaker inputs would provide enough power to make em move, but... I don't speak Greek... :laughing: Computers seem so much eaiser than this stuff.

 

[ajohnson]

Yep, those definatly look like the ones I got.

I just finished building a sort of "test rig".

A piece of wood, a couple brackets, screws, washers, rubber band, and a cable tie and I'm in business. My computer has a 3 speaker amplified system with regular 2 wire connections on the subwoofer for the left & right satellite speakers. The galvo's are hooked to those as shown here:

And heres a few shots. I pointed the beam at the inside of a sort of cabinet I have that was about 4-5 feet away from the laser. The images ranged in size from about 4" to 12" in diameter.

I also held a red pointer next to the green one:

I don't want too overload this thread with pictures (too late! :lolsign: )

I took several other shots and also a movie (which I think is in dire need of cleaning up). You can see all of them here: http://azj.rmcps.com/pictures/lasershow/

I took all of these (and the movie) with my olympus C-750uz on a mini-tripod & used the timer mode so I could hit the button and let the camera settle down before it took the shot.

edit: The movie seems to take quite a while to load. I don't have my editing software here so I'll have to work on it tomorrow. If you really want to see it I suppose you can just wait it out. Might be best to right-click on it and select "save target as" and download it that way before trying to view it.

 

[ajohnson]

Oh, btw, playing an mp3 didnt do very much at all to produce any kind of pattern. More like just a jittery dot. Might have to add a mirror on a speaker or something if I want to have anything happen there.

 

[allthatwhichis]

I'm DLin the movie ATM, did those patterns come from the program or the speaker?

 

[ajohnson]

Those patterns are from the program, which uses 2 software oscillators to make 2 frequency outputs, 1 on left channel and 1 on right channel. The galvos are hooked to the right & left channel along with my satellite speakers. I did try unhooking the satellite speakers to see if the pattern got bigger (and also to save my ears), but it didn't seem to make a difference. I had to turn it up fairly loud (note: I'm old. You young guys might not think it's loud :naughty: ) to get a sizeable pattern out of it.

 

[wondergimp]

Oh, btw, playing an mp3 didnt do very much at all to produce any kind of pattern. More like just a jittery dot. Might have to add a mirror on a speaker or something if I want to have anything happen there.

How much power is you MP3 supplying to the galvos? It may not be enough.

 

[ajohnson]

I'd have to turn up the volume quite a bit to see anything, but I think it would still just be a jittery dot with this setup. Other people have used a setup that was already generating a tunnel pattern, and then added mirrors on speakers to make it move around. If I get a kit similar to the one I was talking about in an earlier message (waiting on a couple local electronic supply stores to give me a price) then I may write something to control the beam position in real time, and add the 3rd galvo with audio on that. I've got a few other ideas kicking around too, but most hinge on the kit.

btw I converted the MOV to a WMV. It went from 20mb to 4mb so it should be easier to get now.

 

[allthatwhichis]

Damn, that sux. If our galvos are the same (when I get mine), I had hoped a speaker output would provide enough voltage to move it around... I poster puddied a mirror onto a speaker yesterday that pointed to a mirror on a fan, but the speaker doesn't seem to move it's mirror enough either...

 

[ajohnson]

The mirror on the speaker should move it, but you probably need a bit more than that. The problem is with 2 galvos hooked to left & right is that most music is putting similar if not the same sort of signal to both sides. If right = up & down and left = right & left, all you do is move the dot around. If you start with a laser doing some sort of pattern and THEN move/vibrate it around randomly to music, it looks much cooler. You just have to work out a way to do that. Generally it looks like you get some sort of pattern generator (tunnel, cloverleaf etc) and put the speaker mirror first in the beam for that.

If after all that your speaker doesnt move the beam enough, then you might need a larger/longer throw or an amp or something. Remember my tests were with my computer speaker system. I've read that a standard 8 ohm speaker draws 1 watt at 2.83volts, and if the galvos peg max at 5v then 2 watts should be plenty. My home stereo can put out 100 watts per channel, so I don't think there's a real issue if you really want to drive the galvos.

 

[allthatwhichis]

Hmmm, so the tunnel first huh? I was looking at a first surface mirror device that spun and created a liquid sky line. I wanted to use one galvo with a y axis movment that would mimic a sound beat and bounce that off the liquid sky forming a sound wave line... I need to get the galvo to work first...