Re:Realtime laser graphics
by lutorm on Saturday December 03, 2011 @04:14PM
(#3308848)
Wow, that is awesome! We played around with this back in ~1990 with the sound outputs on an Amiga driving a set of slaughtered speakers with little mirrors attached. We did nothing nearly as advanced, just played with sine wave outputs synced to music, but the limiting factor there was definitely the hardware. If you tried to make hard turns with our setup, it would just make huge amounts of noise and quickly fall apart.
I wish he would write more about what hardware he's using to do this. These days I guess you can use some sort of MEMS device that would give you way higher output bandwidth. And now when you can buy 1-watt lasers for a few hundred bucks, you could really do something that only Jean-Michel Jarre could have done back in those days...
I saw a project similar to yours just recently, with mirror shards attached to speakers. It was controlled with Max/MSP and it had the same limitations -- just simple round shapes and squiggles. But the parts cost next to nothing. A polished version that fit in your pocket would make a really cool toy.
Re:Realtime laser graphics
by lm741 on Saturday December 03, 2011 @04:18PM
(#3308863)
Speaking of DIY/open laser dacs, one of my friends built one called the ether-dream. (http://ether-dream.com/) You can control it over ethernet and all of the firmware is on github.
I put together a simple AVR based laser system once that projects a UV laser onto a glow in the dark surface. Check out at http://lm741.posterous.com/ if you're curious.
Re:Realtime laser graphics
by jevinskie on Saturday December 03, 2011 @08:22PM
(#3309511)
Indeed. Hector was one member of the fail0verflow team that independently discovered various exploits in the PS3's isolated SPU loaders and the groundbreaking ECDSA fail that allowed anyone to calculate Sony's private keys.
I wish he would write more about what hardware he's using to do this. These days I guess you can use some sort of MEMS device that would give you way higher output bandwidth. And now when you can buy 1-watt lasers for a few hundred bucks, you could really do something that only Jean-Michel Jarre could have done back in those days...
I saw a project similar to yours just recently, with mirror shards attached to speakers. It was controlled with Max/MSP and it had the same limitations -- just simple round shapes and squiggles. But the parts cost next to nothing. A polished version that fit in your pocket would make a really cool toy.
I put together a simple AVR based laser system once that projects a UV laser onto a glow in the dark surface. Check out at http://lm741.posterous.com/ if you're curious.