ArduLASER

Hi all :slight_smile:
I'm a newbie to Arduino and electronics in general, and this was my first Arduino project. I just finished it today, and I think it's turned out great for a first! I'm a huge fan of all things laser, and I figured that I'd like to try a programmable laser scanner build myself, and the ArduLASER is the result.

It's a 2D laser "projector" that'll make nifty beams, sweeps, tunnels and stuff like that in the air (a little smoke from a fog-machine makes it even cooler).

There's much more info and some videos and pictures on my blog and wiki. The source-code and some build info is available on the wiki as well.

Wiki: http://wiki.tossenet.dk/mediawiki/index.php/ArduLASER
Blog: http://www.tossenet.dk/?cat=4

Huge thanks to everyone from these forums that helped me in learning and building this! I am stoked that my programming skills can suddenly be used to build something "real" and not just virtual stuff ;D

Nice. Do you think using steppers instead of galvos negatively affects the quality?

Yeah, the steppers are not nearly as fast as or precise as galvos. With proper galvos you can you can get very high speeds. Around 50,000 points per second. I'm running my steppers at 800RPM and a .9 degree stepping angle, which "only" gives me around 5,300 points per second maximum. It's still fast enough to do some cool stuff, but it can't draw advanced patterns and stuff, so it's limited to simple geometric shapes.