Techno Tron 5000

Laser light machines are currently expensive and made for a large room setting. We set out to make a cost effective version for smaller personal use. We connected the laser module to a microprocessor based Digital to Analogue Converter (DAC) using an Ethernet connection. This hardware is enclosed in a toolbox with two openings to display our laser images and provide power. We control the hardware with a user interface that is intended for a Windows computer. This graphical user interface allows the user to manually draw the images they wish to display with the mouse. The laser is sent the images over the network by our software, with a simple export function. Our hardware DAC is a brand new non-commercial board with no current software written specifically for it, requiring us to write our own driver software for communication between the hardware and software. The laser hardware is point based; shapes are created by the light between the two points Windows extracts for each shape. Our system makes it easy for most computer users to have their own laser light show in a private setting.