Working with lasers is one of my favourite hobbies. My projects have varied from building power supplies to building a laser projector, working with AOMs to writing a whole stack of software. There are lots of photographs in the gallery, please feel free to contact me about any of this stuff–especially if you’re interested in working with lasers on Mac OS X.

My interest in lasers started in my first semester of college. I bought a cheap HeNe and an Argon-Ion laser on eBay and spent days reading Sam’s Laser FAQ. What a wide world of fun it is! I’ll include some summaries of projects here, but more information is likely available on the the Laserist category of the blog.

Software

LaserLine I started LaserLine in the fall of 2003 to control a scanner device I built to display graphics with a Laser. This system uses the analog audio output of your macintosh to drive the scanner. Written with an Objective-C Cocoa interface, the underlying audio generation code is being reimplemented from Java to C via Core Audio. After I initially prototyped this software, with Java, my local ACM chapter at UIUC took on the project as an Engineering Open House project (where it won 2nd place in its category in 2005) and greatly improved the software. It still needs some development, but works pretty well as it is. The original design motivation was to create software with an easy-to-use user interface that anyone could use.

LaserLine 2.0

The second generation implementation of LaserLine is LaserLine 2.0 written in pure cocoa, removing the audio-java code. LaserLine 2.0 was redesigned from the ground up to promote a whole workflow related to laser show production. Development of this project moved us to a USB dac, rather than soundcard output, and encouraged the development of several side projects. The whole stack of software includes a USB driver for the EasyLase USB DAC card, a file format library for the ILDA format, and the basis of a full-featured Cocoa app for laser show creation and playback. The show creation and playback tool hasn’t reached a fully developed stage, but has encouraged the development of several other tools, like ILDAInspector, a simple frame viewer and playback tool.

The modular structure of the application has allowed for testing of text, flash animation import, programmatically generated patterns, and more. Additional information is available on the Trac page.

EasyLase Driver for OS X

The EasyLase USB by Müller Elektronik is an excellent low cost, high-quality DAC with ILDA compatible output. It was selected for the LaserLine 2.0 project. With the cooperation of Joachim Müller, I ported the driver to Mac OS X and have made it available here for download. The API is identical to Windows and Linux drivers, so documentation regarding programming for the EasyLase is applicable. The Mac OS X version implements all of the features of the supported driver and has been extensively tested on PowerPC and Intel platforms on 10.4 and 10.5.

I have also been working on Java language bindings using JNA and a Processing module and sample code which will soon be available as well.

Version History

1.0: Initial Public Release. Includes OS X Installer Package.
1.0b4: Bug fixed related to EasyLaseStop function.
1.0b3: Memory leaks fixed. DMX I/O and TTL output implemented.
1.0b1: Core laser frame output implemented.

Download EasyLase USB Driver 1.0:

Download libEasyLase v1.0 (Universal):

libEasyLase.dmg.

iTunes Visualizer Plug-In

I put together an iTunes plugin for laser visualization of the audio waveform on the EasyLase USB. It requires the libEasyLase driver be installed, and you have a mac hooked up to an EasyLase USB card, but if you’ve satisfied those requirements, why not play with iTunes and your laser! I’ve got the source available if you’d like it, but it is rather messy, so please email me if you’d like to hack on it.

Version History

1.0: Initial Public Release.

Download LaserVisuzlizer iTunes Plug-in 1.0:

Download LaserVisuzlizer iTunes Plug-in (Intel):

LaserVisualizer.zip.

Laser MacMame

I think this is the most impressive part of the whole bunch of laser software. I’ve posted on the blog about this, eventually you will be able to download a version here.

Hardware

Blu-Ray Laser Pointer

I built a Blu-Ray laser pointer that I feel turned out rather well. It is in an adorable little blue enclosure manufactured by Pomona Electronics.

Galvos

I have been working on making a laser projector in a style similar to that of Chan and Norm, to produce graphics generated by the next generation of LaserLine.

I built everything and am quite happy with the machined aluminum galvos, but currently I use commercial hardware. I was never able to properly tune the amps. Here are some photos: