

Realtime laser graphics - rohit89
http://marcansoft.com/blog/2010/11/openlase-open-realtime-laser-graphics/

======
lutorm
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...

~~~
extension
Lot's of details on the hardware here:
<http://marcansoft.com/blog/openlase/hardware-mark-1/>

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.

------
lm741
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.

------
mef
Description of the actual hardware laser scanner used
<http://marcansoft.com/blog/openlase/hardware-mark-1/>

------
faragon
Hector Martín (marcan, @marcan42) could be the next Fabrice Bellard. He has an
incredible potential.

~~~
jevinskie
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.

------
yulka_plek
Robin Fox's work with lasers is quite incredible "synchronous sound and light
information": <http://robinfox.net/projects/laser/>

