RGB Laser Projector in the Arcade

DogP

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 3, 2001
Messages
13,753
Reaction score
1,811
Location
Virginia
I know a few of you saw this at my last arcade party, but I figured I'd finally get around to posting this in the general forum for everyone to see.



It's from Spencer's, called the 3D Laser Party Light: http://www.spencersonline.com/product/ss-3d-laser-party-light/ . It's only $169 (cheapest RGB projector I've found anywhere, and actually decent quality), and it comes with built-in animations... but if you pop the back off the case, there's an SD card inside, which holds all the animations. Of course I've modified these to be mostly arcade related. :)

I also made some modifications to make it better. The original projector comes with a 405nm laser as the "blue" laser, which is really tough to see, since it's basically blacklight color (shows up blue if you project onto paper). I actually damaged this laser diode right before my last party, so I had a good excuse to replace it with a 445nm true blue laser diode. Of course those that saw it at the party might have noticed that the colors were dim and not well balanced, since I had to turn the other colors way down to try to match the half dead violet laser.

Like taking good videos of a vector monitor, it's really difficult to take a good video of this, since the lasers have such high contrast in the dark, and the refresh isn't consistent on all frames. And once all the compression and youtube "optimization" is done, it comes out looking kinda crappy. It looks really cool in person though (like an extremely large vector monitor on the wall). :)

For those interested in the technical stuff, you can see a bunch of details in a post I made on a laser forum, which also details my modifications, here: http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums...quot-Laser-3D-Party-Light-quot-from-Spencer-s .

The frames were mostly exported from MAME by a custom build I made, which were then converted to the correct format by a program called LaserBoy. I also converted some bitmaps using another app called bmp2ild. Some animations were pulled from other shows scattered around the internet as well.

I have a few more plans for it... one of which is to modify it to be controlled by a PC in real-time (so you can actually play games on it).

If anyone plans to buy one of these... I've found that there are at least two versions of this projector. The new version is far superior to the old one, so if possible, you should try to inspect it before purchasing. If you look at the other forum post, you can see pictures of both so you know what to look for.

DogP
 
That is really cool. Any way you can post those pics here..

You need to be a member there to see the pics.

If anyone plans to buy one of these... I've found that there are at least two versions of this projector. The new version is far superior to the old one, so if possible, you should try to inspect it before purchasing. If you look at the other forum post, you can see pictures of both so you know what to look for.
 
That is really cool. Any way you can post those pics here..

You need to be a member there to see the pics.

Ah... I didn't realize you couldn't see pics there without being a member. There are a LOT of pics over there, but attached are some differences, so you can hopefully pop open the box in the store and take a look through the side to determine which model it is.

The board is mounted on the inside of the back wall:
attachment.php


The old one looks like this:
attachment.php

You can see a lot of squiggles on a test pattern:
attachment.php


The new one looks like this:
attachment.php

Nice straight lines:
attachment.php


They should let you open the box to look, but probably won't let you unscrew the back... so, to tell the difference, look through the vents on the side. The easiest way to tell is probably to look where the lasers plug in. If they're on a sub-board, it's the old one. If all three are on the main board in a single row, then it's the good one. Of course there may be other versions, but not that I know of.

DogP
 

Attachments

  • 11.jpg
    11.jpg
    59.8 KB · Views: 951
  • 18.jpg
    18.jpg
    62.7 KB · Views: 941
  • 3.jpg
    3.jpg
    84.2 KB · Views: 953
  • bad.jpg
    bad.jpg
    91.3 KB · Views: 1,053
  • good.jpg
    good.jpg
    98.9 KB · Views: 1,048
BTW, if anyone picks one of these up, I'd be glad to share my files, tools, etc... and try to explain how to create/customize your own stuff.

And if anyone uses fog machines or has kinda a "hazy" area, you can do some really cool beam shows (pointing the projector in the direction of view, rather than at a wall). You kinda need it to be outside, or have a tall ceiling for that though, so you're not shining in people's eyes.

Like these (not mine)... the first one is probably a much better system than mine, but you get the idea... and I believe you can actually make the second one out of just a laser pointer, fan, and mirror:



DogP
 
Last edited:
Thanks... hopefully I'll be able to hook it to a computer soon, so I can actually play some games on it... but it makes some good ambience for now.

DogP
 
Does it have any kind of input (even on the board itself)? This would make an awesome vector game emulator.
 
There was a laser place on ebay that used to start their auctions at $0.01. I got one of their laser units (single color with preset patterns) for $16 + $10 shipping. I don't know if they are still selling on ebay, but it might be worth checking out. It definitely is a conversation piece at parties.

ken

Found a couple pics:

attachment.php


attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • sm_PC246221.jpg
    sm_PC246221.jpg
    75.9 KB · Views: 670
  • sm_PC246223.jpg
    sm_PC246223.jpg
    68.6 KB · Views: 674
Last edited:
Does it have any kind of input (even on the board itself)? This would make an awesome vector game emulator.
There's no real input, other than the SD card. It'd be difficult to put an emulator on the existing MCU anyway since the code isn't available to modify, so you'd need to start from scratch... and it's not a very fast MCU either. I plan to make a USB interface for it though, so you could stick a small computer in there (Raspberry Pi, MK802, etc.) and run an emulator on that if you wanted to.

awesome. i need this, don't know why...but i do.
Yeah, when I saw it at Spencer's, I remembered a video I saw years ago of someone playing Tempest on a laser projector, and figured I could probably hack it to do something similar, so I had to get it and try. It's not interactive yet, but still cool. And I've always been a sucker for lasers.

DogP
 
I have a 1st gen Raspberry Pi, but I'm not too confident about it outputting any emulation to a vector display. However, if you ever get it to take any kind of input interactively that would be cool.

Even without that you can see that the price drop is very significant.
 
The second I saw that visions of an arcade on my wall went dancing through my head. That being said, even without that, awesome work.
 
I actually kinda laughed when I saw Wreck-It Ralph, in the scene where it pans to the party, there's a laser projector running a 30th anniversary animation or something. Of course I couldn't find that scene online (didn't want to d/l a bootleg copy of the whole movie), otherwise I was gonna try to recreate it.

DogP
 
oooohhhhh.... i need to get this for the next SC3 party. Thanks for sharing!!
If you (or anyone else) pick one up, definitely post... I'm interested to hear others' experience with this, and it'd be interesting to see if there are any other hardware differences.

DogP
 
http://www.amazon.com/Laser-Effects...&qid=1354752823&sr=8-2&keywords=laser+display

Laser Effects Light Show Projector With Red And Green Lights

I picked one of these up from amazon a while back and it get used by the kids in the arcade all the time. It's very bright and works great for the price.

Yeah, those are cool if you've got an area that needs some party lighting kinda stuff... but IMO the one I've got is totally different. It's not really to give the party lighting effect, but gives more of a vector monitor on the wall kinda feel with lasers. It just seems to fit right in with the arcade stuff.

DogP
 
I've had a few people ask me for the laser art files... I was gonna try to upload them somewhere, but they're only ~4MB zipped, so it's probably easiest to just email them. Drop me a PM w/ your email address if you'd like a copy, and I'll send them over.

DogP
 
Back
Top Bottom