USE IT.
SHINE
ON
OPEN SOURCE COOLARITY
Wayne and I have made 5 boxen so far: 2 Lumias
(red and red-and-green), a Diffracterator (green),
and 2 Motiondizers (violet and green).
And as for Penguicon, things worked very
well. The DJ at the dance party wanted to buy a
Diffracterator on the spot.
I SING THE LUNCHBOX ELECTRIC
Since the boxen run off batteries, you can do shows
in camp. Not that you should, of course.
For indoor gigs, Wayne also built a massive power
supply into a project case, and I found a suitable
snake cable online that we use to get 12V DC to
everything that needs it.
We also have several wall-wart power supplies we
picked up at ham fests and such. The boxen don’t
draw much power, so a small wart would probably
do you. With a couple of warts, we can do shows
without having to drag the big box around.
The Wobbulator disk on the Diffracterator, incidentally, is my one contribution to world culture.
There are lots of other laser grating effects out
there, but AFAIK, this is the first with a Wobbulator.
(Although it may have been invented decades ago
by Ivan Dryer at Laserium, I dunno.)
FEEDING THE MOTIONDIZER
The Motiondizer needs full-strength input from
your audio system, so if you also want to hear your
regular speakers, you may need a splitter such as
a distribution amplifier (DA). We use DAs we found
on the internet. You can also control the Motiondizer
with just a microphone, using a mic pre-amp. In
concert, you can run line-level signals for a
Motiondizer from the mixing board.
VARIATIONS
Lasers are blisteringly awesome to behold, susceptible to endless tweakage, and dirt cheap. The Lumia
and Motiondizer boxes have enough room to mount
2 colored lasers, following slightly different paths to
create superimposed pattern projections.
The Lumia projector Wayne built (shown here,
minus the wheel) has red and green lasers both
cooking away. Note the cooling fan and heat sink on
the top laser, a 20m W greenie. The mirror is secured
with a cabinet door hinge and a strip of pipe strap.
The motor has a more elegant mounting method:
standoffs made for circuit board support. He also
used ¼" masonite for his base. Having a better stock
of sheet metal than I, Wayne used brass strips and
small angle brackets for his laser supports. The blue
material around the edge is designed to cushion the
apparatus in transit, and the copper strip at the top
secures the base plate to the box.
RESOURCES
A good place to start: laserpointerforums.com
For advanced users and professional laserists:
photonlexicon.com/forums
The pioneering work of Thomas Wilfred:
lumia-wilfred.org
Visit makezine.com/20/lunchboxen for the
circuit schematic, hobby laser and materials
buying advice, and photos of the laser lunchboxen
in action.
119 Make:
