Dan Maloney
@Seb Lee-Delisle Sorry, I've been a little slow to keep up. Okay, so it's actually the same kind of interlock we use on ours, but our industrial lasers are connected to a tilt switch. So yours are connected to the estop signal pin, and estop kills it and bypasses any filter capacitance same as ours?
What kind of permits do you need to operate a laser like these, in the public ?
@cerrid kinda depends what you want it for and how much you want to spend. I think the lasercube is a good budget choice if you wanna get into coding lasers
@riley.august something like that I'm sure
https://www.laseros.com/laser/cube/ ~$1000 USD
@Steven Smethurst very little in the UK - there's a government guidance document that you should be able to prove that you have adhered to and it's best to get training, but there's no official licence. Having said that, most venues/councils won't let you use them unless you can prove you're competent. In the US it's way more complex, you need different licences in different states!
Also, I absolutely don't regret diving into the internals of lasers. I've been in the laser manufacturing biz for six years. I love this stuff.
I was mostly curious on the diffs between industrial interlocks and performance interlocks because I figure your safety standards are way higher
@riley.august good to hear 😊
@riley.august I wouldn't count on it
We can just lock a laser in an opaque box, hit go, and tell the operator not to kill himself
The thing about industrial lasers is that they're not made to be seen
You mentioned inappropriate power cut-off as damaging to a performance laser. Are there any other kinds of experience-won tips or advice you can think of the help newcomers avoid making simple-but-expensive mistakes?
the biggest thing about operating lasers at shows isnt runing them, its making sure idiots dont do dumb things linke stand on speakers and stare into the beams
@Steven Smethurst you can probably get the cheapest option on a laser cube if you're just experimenting in small to medium spaces
you pretty much gotta babysit yoru gear all night
for everyones sake
@Duncan Beevers The hardest part about getting started is actually getting to try lasers. Unless you know other people in the industry, there's no where you can get your hands on stuff. I'm hoping to make lasers more accessible but there's a long way to go. It's a very homogenous industry right now.
When communicating with the laser. Do you stream data to it, frame by frame?, or send the seen (group of frames) of data to it then start the seen, to roll though the frames?
@psycon yeah you absolutely can't leave these things unattended
@Seb Lee-Delisle For home experimentation, besides the laser, a computer, and basic ppe is there anything else someone who would be just getting into this need?
@Steven Smethurst most interfaces use a point stream, so you manage each "frame" yourself. My system can be synced to a particular frame rate but by default it will animate things as fast as it can - the frame rate varies dependent on the complexity of what it needs to draw
it can be a fun hobby though, i usually work on stage alongside of the talent for smaller shows and produce jsut as much of a live set as they do, jsut for peoples eyes instead of their ears
i prefer doing liveshows as opposed to preprogramming
@cerrid if you want beams you'll need a hazer of some sort. If you're careful about keeping the laser beam out of your eyes you probably don't need eyewear (although you can never be too careful)
hazer is essential
@psycon a lot of my work is graphics so not necessarily. But hazers are always fun
In the 70s and 80s, no hazer was needed at the concerts I went to.
your correct... for beam shows a hazer is esssential, for graphics, not at all
does a simple fog machine with controllable output work as a hazer or are there purpose built devices for this?
a fun effect actually is projecting through noseeum netting ( like the stuff on a screen door)
Yeah, for something like Laser Asteroids, would a hazer make the experience illegible?
yes
you would need a flat surface duncan
@Cerrid hazers are purpose built and are essentially more controllable smoke machines with a built in fan - you can probably get away with a smoke machine at home but hazers are better if you can get one
@Duncan Beevers probably not. It always looks better with a bit of haze, even graphics
:)
3-d asteroids, that'd be awesome :)
When experimenting there is something else nobody mentioned. LASER. GOGGLES.
i would also like to add,, i have had soo many bad experiences with fog machines tripping a voltage sensor inside of many lasers whenever their heater turns on or you blast, requiring a reboot of the the laser... a nightmare if it happens during showtime
Once your show is set up and safetied the goggles can come off, but if you're messing around in your lab, you duct tape goggles to your face
@cerrid you can actually project 3d laser graphics although I've never tried it
That's a great anecdote. Thanks @psycon
@riley.august someone did mention them already. Like I said, you can't be too careful but I generally run the lasers at very low brightness to position them, then only put them full power once they're safe
Oh good, yes. Glad that did get covered. <3
Sorry. This chat's kinda background. Apologies if I'm missing stuff.
What are the big challenges of laser fireworks?
There were a lot of comments on the Tom Scott video saying that we were being reckless for being in the same room as a laser without goggles. Or even looking at the dot it projects on the wall. I think that's probably because of styropyro - but with professional lasers there's no real risk once it's set up
and of course with handheld lasers like styropyro uses, they're a lot more out of control than my units
Has Styropyro kind of ruined things for laser pros?
@aerickson did you see the instagram videos? It was a really fun project, building the light rods was the hardest part. But there are other challenges - tracking the rods with cameras, and syncing the LEDs up with the lasers. It was the first time we tried it in February and it worked perfectly. Big plans for that system :)
@Dan Maloney @Seb Lee-Delisle ...yeah, gas lasers area a pain, but the amount of gear to produce 1W of RGB laser output is more like the size of a clunky piece of furniture than a car. Tubes like the Spectra-Physics 171 could get into the 20W range, but are no tame job to feed...480V 3PH and hefty water cooling requirements for both the power supply AND tube. For a while frequency-doubled YAGs (sometimes combined with argon or a dye-laser system) were popular because you could get A LOT of laser light out of a not-too-unreasonable-to-handle package
@Dan Maloney jus wait till he loses an eye
Or someone else's...
even worse ya
@Dan Maloney I don't think so - I love styropyro - but it seems that some people are getting a lasercube to burn things, and honestly I don't really see the appeal
sebs setup looked safe to me
@Seb Lee-Delisle You mentioned using a 12w laser early, is it possible to experiment at home with a lower wattage laser or is 12w the optimal minimum?
@david.francus thanks for that, yeah I have no experience of that except when I went to laserium in 1985 😊
I guess it all depends on where you are in the hormone curve - destruction has its max appeal earlier, I think
@cerrid 12w is way too much to use at home. Sometimes I have to test things out here and its INTENSE. Let me see if I can find pictures. But 1W is plenty for home use
im always a safety nazi when it comes to doing a show.. giving myself at least an hour to do a presetup safety check any time i enter a new venue, to set ceilings, blackout zones and whatnot
This is 4 x 4W lasers in my home work room
no haze?
That looks heckin sweet
Wow, that's awesome :)
whoa
This is a fun interactive dance project I worked on
oooooo and ahhhhhhhh
nice!
Oh that's cool
i got a question abotu the tom scott vid.... what did it look like in person
@Seb Lee-Delisle Is it possible/have you done anything with light wave interference/amplification patterns?
This is me testing out 6 x 12W in my living room. It was scary https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx8NKdJhYdC/
like, could that effect be added to laser os so the visulizations look normal to ppl at the show, but looks weird AF on camera
@psycon it just looked like a single beam that was flickering slightly
@psycon - most laser effects look freaky in rolling shutter without even really trying
@cerrid I have not
indeed
Oops - just looked up at the time and saw that we've burned through our hour. If Seb needs to get back to work we should let him, but everyone can feel free to stay on and keep the chat going. I'll just say an official thanks to Seb for his time today. I really learned a lot!
@psycon you need to tune the effect with the camera so it has to be quite specific
@Seb Lee-Delisle thank you :)
Thank you !
It's 9pm my time so I'm happy to hang around - thanks for having me @Dan Maloney !
Thanks for the chat Seb, I learned a lot about laser applications I don't normally touch.
My pleasure!
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Join us for an open-forum Hack Chat on Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at noon Pacific Time. Time zones got you down? Here's a handy time converter! The COVID-19 pandemic has been sweeping across the globe now for three months.
I really like the triple-laser-harp at Meow Wolf.
you can play your own laser harps with laserlightsynths.com
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