This users guide should get you up and running with Laser Sim very quickly.
Installing
Before installing, you must have Java installed. Get it here.
If you have a UsbDmx.com interface, you will need to have the FTDI VCP drivers installed on your system. Get them here. (Get the ones for the FT245M, if you can’t find those, try the FT245BM)
Once you have Java installed, simply run the setup program. It will take care of installing all the needed files and creating shortcuts.
Getting Started – Starting the software.
By default, Laser Sim starts up with no outputs assigned, and not accepting DMX control. These options must be set from the Options pane within Laser Sim.
The text field next to the Art-Net option should contain which Art-Net universe you want to listen on.
The text field next to the UsbDmx option should contain the COM port that the interface is connected to.
The text field next to the two outputs are whatever output devices you want to use. These numbers can be found in the display settings in the Windows control panel.
The start address text field should contain what dmx channel you want to set first channel of LaserSim to.
Getting Started – Getting stuff to appear on the screen/projector.
Getting things to appear on the output is a little tricky if you haven’t done it a few times.
First, you should bring up the Beam Size channel to actually make the beams appear large enough to see.
Then, you can bring up the intensity, or you could have done that first, doesn’t matter.
If you specify a beam type besides Single Beam, you will also have to bring up the Number of Beams channel, or else the one beam you have, will disappear.
Also to get the Fan or Tunnel beam types to appear, you will need to bring up the zoom channel.
Using the effects channel requires that you set the rotation channel to zero, since the effects are actually a special rotation value. These values are not programmed in the software in any special way, and actually just make your lasers rotate really fast, fast enough that it is rotating faster than the computer is sending frames to the display device, causing it to be drawn on screen in a way that creates the “effects”. These values just have to be played with to see what they do, but there are some cool ones in there, though most won’t look very interesting. I actually came across this during initial writing of the software, and liked my mistake so much that I made it its own DMX channel. (grin)
DMX Patch Info – Per Laser
Remember that each output has two lasers, and there can be two outputs. Laser one is starts at the DMX value specified by –channel, and laser two through four is automatically patched in order after that.
- Beam Type [0 – 51 Single Beam, 52 – 102 Fan, 103 – 153 Tunnel 1, 154 – 204 Tunnel 2, 205 – 255 Reserved for expansion]
- Intensity
- Pan
- Tilt
- Cyan
- Magenta
- Yellow
- Beam Size
- Number of Beams
- Rotation [0 – 128 Indexed, 129 – 190 CW on screen/ slow -> fast, 191 – 255 CCW on screen/fast -> slow]
- Effects
- Zoom
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