At Knobcon 2018, 1010music introduced Laserbox, a new firmware for their Toolbox platform that lets you control frickin’ lasers with your modular synthesizer.
We talked with creator Aaron Higgins, who gave us an overview and demo of how the system works.
With Laserbox, you can drive a laser by generating patterns, using premade image wave files, or via CV signals received from other Eurorack modules.
The system also lets you use CV signals to modulate the signals sent to the laser. You can use modulation to control the shape of the wave signal, the colors, the position of the projection, and the rotation of the projection.
Laserbox lets you preview the image onscreen and save the settings you like as presets. You can use Laserbox as part of a laser system.
Pricing and Availability
Laserbox is available for US $599.95, or as a free firmware (for registered 1010music forum members) that you can use for Toolbox modules. See the 1010music site for details or the user guide (pdf).
It actually looks like all the heavy lifting (CV to ILDA [like MIDI for Lasers]) is being done by a $250 box: the Cyclops
https://www.lzxindustries.net//shop/product/lzxilda-cyclops-2189
Quite the opposite. The Cyclops is essentially just doing voltage level translation/scaling. ILDA already uses analog voltage level signalling in the audio frequency range, so it’s pretty trivial to convert synth CV signals to ILDA. The real magic is definitely in the work that Aaron & co put into the hardware and software for the toolbox/laserbox.
I got to meet Aaron and see this setup earlier this summer, he’s definitely a sharp guy doing some really cool work. This is clearly already further along than it was a month ago, I really look forward to seeing where he takes it from here.
(Disclosure: I work in product development at X-Laser, the company that made the laser Aaron is using. I’ve designed and programmed laser control hardware, so I’m familiar with what kind of work goes into what he’s doing with Laserbox.)
Boring.
Boring is waiting for Jan Ostman Kickstarter orders that never ship:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/732508269/the-tiny-ts-an-open-sourced-diy-touch-synthesizer/comments
Ouch!
Also, completely true.
Hi Jan! What are you doing with all the money you take from people on kickstarter?
This is so cool. I want one immediately!!!