Re: Laser Hack?

This talk about laser/vector got me looking and I found this:

http://spt06.chez.tiscali.fr/00/lasers.htm

The "Build a $20 laser scanner" is right around my price point ;-)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Zonn" <mlists@zonn.com>
To: <vectorlist@vectorlist.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 2:28 PM
Subject: Re: VECTOR: Laser Hack?

> On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 18:57:59 -0600, Mark Shostak <xx.vl@cinelabs.com>
> wrote:
>
>>uP controlled? They all look like sine based images.
>>The micro may only be controlling the speed and possibly the Z-axis.
>>
>>On the other hand, I have a clock that produces beautiful numbers IMHO,
>>using a uP controlling a sine wave on a vector display, so you never
>>know...
>>
>>-Mark
>>
>>On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 05:01:17PM -0700, Kurt Mahan wrote:
>>> As I was paging through the daily pile of spam the postman delivers
>>> (in preparation for dumping in the recycle bin) I glanced through
>>> the X-Treme Geek catalog.
>>>
>>> There's an item called "Laser Launch" which projects patterns onto a
>>> surface via a laser and a processor controlled mirror. Item: 250 0438
>>> ($29.95US -- wonder if it's available cheaper elsewhere..)
>>>
>>> http://www.x-tremegeek.com/templates/searchdetail.asp?T1=250+0438
>>>
>>> Has anybody hacked one of these? I'm assuming the slew rate is a little
>>> slow to run games on. Maybe a vectrex hack?
>
> I've seen this thing before. At one time I looked really hard into laser
> projection, looking for ways of reprogramming the ZVG to be used for a
> laser.
>
> CRTs (including the Vectrex) are at *least* an order of magnitude faster
> than
> even the fastest mirrors used to project laser patterns (at least they
> were a
> couple of years ago).
>
> The laser projectors were so slow I could easily reprogram the ZVG to work
> at
> laser speeds, in fact they are much easier to control and much of the
> electronics and firmware needed to create nice vectors on a CRT are lost
> on
> laser projectors.
>
> Anyone who saw LaserMAME could tell you that laser projected games are not
> "smooth", very flickery, and that was a very expensive projector.
>
> But I'm ready when a reasonably fast projector comes available, I'll throw
> some
> ZVG firmware at it for some cheap laser vector games.
>
> And yes, that vector clock is very cool! It uses *curved* vectors,
> cooooooool!
>
> -Zonn
>
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Received on Wed Mar 16 18:45:29 2005