Uploaded September 2010 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
So with 24 hours before MicroPalooza, I decided I should make a laser scanner effect for a little eye candy. The laser is a cheapo Laserworld CS-400RGB that I had already. I hacked in an Atmel ATXMega16A4 using one ADC channel to digitize the audio and the two DAC channels to drive the X/Y output to the scanner. The output is through a standard ILDA interface.
Since the laser is TTL blanking only, I just connected the ILDA RGB pins to IO's on the XMega. I didn't have much time left to write the software after bodging everything together, but I was able to implement a standard oscilloscope as well as a circular one and some sine wave tricks.
I only used about ~7K of Flash in the XMega (most of that for tables).
Amazingly enough it ran all night and worked like a charm. I need to program more displays, but it's fun having real time response without a big old PC running the show. (and all solid state-- no extra spinning mirrors or motors or whatnot).
The galvos are really slow/crappy, so all the waveforms appear a bit 'filtered' (rounded edges), but it still looked pretty cool. The live chiptunes worked great for input.
The artist's name is "Mechlo" and the song is "Bad Vision".
So with 24 hours before MicroPalooza, I decided I should make a laser scanner effect for a little eye candy. The laser is a cheapo Laserworld CS-400RGB that I had already. I hacked in an Atmel ATXMega16A4 using one ADC channel to digitize the audio and the two DAC channels to drive the X/Y output to the scanner. The output is through a standard ILDA interface.
Since the laser is TTL blanking only, I just connected the ILDA RGB pins to IO's on the XMega. I didn't have much time left to write the software after bodging everything together, but I was able to implement a standard oscilloscope as well as a circular one and some sine wave tricks.
I only used about ~7K of Flash in the XMega (most of that for tables).
Amazingly enough it ran all night and worked like a charm. I need to program more displays, but it's fun having real time response without a big old PC running the show. (and all solid state-- no extra spinning mirrors or motors or whatnot).
The galvos are really slow/crappy, so all the waveforms appear a bit 'filtered' (rounded edges), but it still looked pretty cool. The live chiptunes worked great for input.
The artist's name is "Mechlo" and the song is "Bad Vision".
