GraffitiProjector

Project Brief

Create a system that projects images onto building scale surfaces. Enable "painting" on buildings with a high intensity laser. The project is modeled on work by Graffiti Research Lab (GRL).

Budget:

$5,000 tops. Ideally less.

Timeline:

Thursday, March 11th. (OMG)

Parts list

• Laptop computer
  • Provided by Robert Wray
• Video Camera
  • Robert has an HD video camera we can use
• Green Laser (60mW+)
  • Available from WickedLasers for about $200 with 3-5 day shipping
• Projector (2500+ lumens. Ideally 6000+)
  • Mark has 1100 lumen projector (not bright enough)
  • Rentals of 6000+ lumens start around $800 / day

Other thoughts and discussion

Parts list from the GRL site:

• 1 PC Laptop - ASUS A8JS - Core 2 Duo 1.83 Ghz 1GB Ram Nvideo Geforce Go 7300 256MB - VGA and DVI out.
• 1 Pansonic PTD5600U 5000 ANSI Lumens 1024x768 DLP Projector.
• 1 Watec 221S Security/Astrononmy Camera with manual iris zoom lens.
• 1 Bogen magic arm and super clamp.
• 1 Pinnacle PCTV USB capture card.
• 1 60mW Green Laser (super illegal in a lot of places and very dangerous) and loads and loads of AAA batteries.

Questions:

• Extra laptop (guaranteed working), who's got one?
• Powerful projector? Rentals? Proposal: spec the project on our "house" projector and then price out a full strength one on a rental basis.
• Not sure about the camera. Looks like other models will work [1]
• PCTV USB Capture card? WTF?
• Who's got a green laser, or knows how to acquire one on short notice?

Observations:

The full scale setup will be very expensive. A smaller rig will work for test runs and software testing (see [1]).

The software is open source and written in openFrameworks, but binaries are available for Mac OSX (10.4, 10.5) and Win XP / Vista. I recommend not attempting to build or mess with source since the timeframe is short.

Questions for Dave:

• What's the budget? We're looking for order of magnitude: 100, 1000, 10000?
• What's the target and intended mode of operation? Frequent setup and teardown, i.e., mobility vs. stability? Big, long range projection or close small projection? Again, rough order of magnitude: 10m, 100m, 500m (is that even possible?)
• How long should the kit last (one night or a year)? This will determine borrow vs. buy decisions

- Abachman 17:09, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

[1]: http://muonics.net/blog/index.php?postid=26

Here is the essential equipment you will need for your Laser Tag system. 1x fast laptop (PC or Mac) that can connect to an external monitor. It helps if the laptop has a dedicated graphics card, so a Macbook Pro would be preferable to a Macbook for this reason (though macbooks seem to run it just fine!). 1x video camera that you can connect to your laptop. Video cameras that have manual controls tend to be a lot better at tracking the laser than ones that automatically adjust the image depending on how bright it is. 1x projector. Anything over 2000 lumens should be good. 1x laser pointer between 5mW and 80mW in power.

For this setup we are using a Asus F9S laptop with a Logitech Messenger camera, a Benq 2500 lumens projector and a 70mW green laser pointer. This is fine for a small setup but for larger scales you will need a brighter projector and a better camera.