Something Unreal

445nm blue laser @ ~1.5W, scanned at 26 kpps. Original illustration by 平安京エイリアン (Heian-kei Alien).

The black image of Hibiki Ganaha on the wood is also burned by the blue laser (at a slow speed). Original illlustration is by 開栓注意 (kaisenn)

[Watch in HD]

I decided to upgrade the sucky blue laser in my laser projector, and now it can be used as a “burning printer” of sorts.

The old laser was 405nm (almost ultraviolet), 100mW. The new laser is 445nm (bright blue) with a G-2 lens and a maximum output power of 2000mW, but I’m not able to run it at full power yet due to cooling issues. So instead of using 5 volts at 1.5 amps, I’m currently using 3.5 volts (due to my own laziness) at 1.1 amps. Any higher and the driver board’s heat sink gets much too hot to touch (the heat sink is only rated for 0.5 amps, anyway).

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I hand-traced this graphic as part of a laser show which I made for an event on 11th October 2011 called “WOTA London” (episode 12).

This is a 15-minute show that I rushed together in a week for a small party in London called WOTA, which has a Japanese theme. This was the 12th WOTA, and the final one organised by Piloru. This show is 5 times longer than any show I’d made at the time, but I still only had a week from start to finish (which is how long I took to make the 3-minute Dark/Light show). As a result, it’s nowhere near as detailed as my other shows.

I attempted to record this video in 3D with one camera by moving it slightly between 2 separate shots, but it didn’t turn out very well. This is partially because the swirls of fog aren’t in the exact same positions in both shots, and because I apparently moved the camera a little wrongly.

This first video version is recorded with my HD camcorder so the text is clear and easy to read, but it struggles to see the colour of the lasers (blue is invisible at times, and there’s no difference between red/pink, yellow/green, cyan/green). Also, the vertical scanner in my laser projector failed  at some points in the left-eye view, which messes up the 3D view.

[Watch in HD]

This second version is recorded with my old DV camcorder, which sees the colours well, but it’s not HD, so text is harder to read.

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The music starts off as hardstyle, turns to hardcore and ends in trance. The first 3 songs are from USAO’s set from day 1 of the online music event Otaku Hardcore Revolution 4, and the final song is by Halozy. The songs are:

• USAO – Astro Break
• USAO – Bokuってハードスタイルは絶対に聴くな (Don’t listen to a hardstyle called Boku)
• DJ名無し (DJ NaNashi) – NekoJumpen
• Halozy – See You, My Little Moon

My friend’s cat watches my “Toki wo Kizamu Uta” laser show from Christmas 2010 projected onto a wall.

(Full show is here)

[Watch in HD]

This release fixes parallel port output, and adds an option of which parallel port address to use. The standard addresses 0378 (LPT1), 0278 (LPT2) and 03BC (LPT port on an old graphics card) are available.

I had left the parallel port output disabled by mistake again, while testing revision 16…

Usual download place~

This release fixes the bug where the text of the last file in the playlist would never return to normal (black, not bold) after having become red or blue.

Here’s the usual download place.

This is a big update, with the most notable change being playlist functionality. I’ve also sorted the playback position bug when looping audio files (until you disable looping…), and added tooltips to most controls (hold the mouse over a control such as a checkbox to see a little explanation about that control). There are also changes and bug fixes related to pitch detection (revision 14 broke logarithmic scaling while pitch detection was enabled, but it’s fixed again). I removed some controls that were broken or never even used in the history of the program, and added one. Full details are a long way below, after the page break below, which is after my waffling about the playlist system.

Here’s the usual download place.

(Click it to see full-size image)

Since the new playlist system introduces some new things, I’ll briefly go over it here. When you browse for an audio file, you can now select more than one (by holding Shift/Ctrl). If you do this, the Playlist window will appear with the queued files in a list. You can drag-and-drop more files to this list without having to use the old “Browse for audio” button. There are 2 special coloured files in the list: currently-playing and next (pre-loaded). At any time, you can double-click a file in the playlist, and the program will pre-load it as the “next” file to play, just like when you browse for an audio file while one’s already playing. However, by default, the program will automatically load the file following the currently-playing one as soon as possible, turning it blue, so that there will be no gap between the end of the current file and the start of the next file. If you like, you can set it to do this only when the current file finishes playing, so that the waveform displays won’t freeze during playback, or you can disable automatic loading entirely. That is the basic idea of the playlist system. Waveform Display has always handled 2 files at once, but it was never possible to see which 2 files you were dealing with until now.
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Another use for a laser projector! Burning the WOTA London mascot character into an old piece of photographic paper by getting my laser projector to scan it really slowly. Unfortunately, I accidentally made it also draw the blanking lines (where the laser should jump from one area to another while turned off), so there are random straight lines scattered about the image, but oh well.

[Watch in HD]

I hand-traced this graphic as part of a laser show which I made for an event on the 11th of October called “WOTA London” (episode 12). Unfortunately, I pushed myself a little too hard, making a 15-minute show, my longest ever, in 1 week (previously, I took a week to make a 3-minute show). Since I was actually still finishing designing the laser show while packing for and travelling to the event, I forgot to take my camcorder with me. However, I may record it playing at home and upload the video of it some time (although getting permission from several music artists may prove hard).

Here’s the photo of the end result (it really does look this blurry, for some reason).

This version mainly fixes a “division by 0″ bug, improves PC speaker output (there’s a new “PC Speaker Settings” window!), and makes parallel port output work again (I accidentally left it disabled while debugging in revision 14). I’ve also got rid of my previous, bug-crazy attempt of getting the playback position while looping – now, playback position simply stops updating after the loop, and seeking continues to work.

Usual download link is here (now 1.97 MB), and full details of changes are below~

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This version fixes a bug which appeared when loading a new sound while one was still playing. Plus, there are lots of internal changes to improve speed (lower CPU usage), and there’s a new-but-buggy “Loop” function.

Here’s the usual download link! Because of all the changes I made to make the program more efficient, this download is actually half a kilobyte smaller than the previous version, despite me adding lots of text to “version info.txt”!

For details of everything that’s changed, please see below~

EDIT: Whoops, that EXE name had become “Waveform Attempt” again, like it was in ye olden days… Fixed. (more…)