What Could You Do With 120 Laser Pointers?

lazed-dazed asks: "I've recently come into possession of a large number (120 of 'em) of keychain laser pointers (minus the fancy diffraction adapters, though the specs are the same). So, Slashdot, I ask you: Can you give me any project ideas for these low-wattage bad boys? Holograms? Fancy cigarette lighters? Laser cannons? The crazier, the better! Oh, and don't bother suggesting cat toys."

Comments

Be artistic...

[Zarf]

1. Use the poll thingies that they use in chemistry labs to set up tubes, beakers, and those crazy glass pipes to set up your lazer pointers so that all 120 of them can be mounted and aimed as a giant grid.
2. Find a way to lock each one in the "on" or "lit" position.
3. Get a bit-mapped picture of Bob from the Church of the subgenius. Reduce it to a pointalized B&W picture.
4. Project Bob on to the wall that the laser-pointers are aimed at.
5. Position each dot to aim at the center of an individual "white" pixel.
6. Fix the positions of the pointers relative to each other... viola portable projected Bob-head.

Do "Tux the Penguin" or Bill Gates next if you have lazer pointers left over. If you can't get those chemistry set poles then maybe a bunch of lumber and silly putty would work... Forget the lumber... just use mountains of Silly Putty!

Multiplanar autostereoscopic imaging system

[Maller]

Build a 3D imager. Gregg Favalora, the founder of Actuality Systems, did just this as a precursor to his company's 3D imaging systems. It consisted of lasers from laser pointers, a spinning plane, and a microprocessor. The array of lasers would light momentarily to create voxels, 3D pixels, on the plane. Add some well-crafted software and you have 3D monochromatic display. I can't seem to find a image of this on the web, but I can assure you the picture of Homer Simpson's head was unmistakeable.

Note: I am sure it was nowhere near as simple as I have explained, but I believe the concept is correct.

Make a rolling notice board

[Anonymous Coward]

Form the lasers into a grid say 15x8 or 17x7 and set them in some plastic let say ... polyethene resin. And rig them up with a hand held computer and (hand waving) a couple of relays.
You will then be able to project messages on the people, walls, cars. Insert funny messages here...

3D projector

[bolind]

OK, remember the dude who put a couple dozen LED's on a spinning arm (think windmill) and triggered them at just the right time, so when the arm span, he'd have graphics or text or whatever in mid-air.

Place all 120 of them on an arm, but spin it around its own length (think driveshaft) in the middle of a room. If you were able to control them individually (even though they were spinning) you could have whatever graphics you wanted on the walls.

Re:experiments

[crapulent]

I don't think so. Even if they were putting out the maximum 5mW of power (which they're not) that's still only 0.6 Watts. The smallest and weakest soldering irons out there are probably at least 10 to 20 times that much power, and they'd have a tough time melting anything but very small pads.

And, even more importantly, it's not going to be very focused. If you look at the spot a laser pointer makes it's more of a blob, the optics on these things are NOT meant to be very accurate. Plus, with 120 of them, there's almost zero chance that they'd all be aimed at exactly the same spot. In order for cutting lasers to be useful they have to be highly focused and concentrated in a very small spot, much like the whole magnifying-glass-starts-fires trick thing.

I think you'd have a better chance of getting something to light by rubbing sticks together.

Protest demonstration?

[David McBride]

One random idea I had yesterday -- use them at a protest rally.

Having every protester bring a laser pointer and point it at the source of their ire as they go past could make the point quite well. Particularly if they're just watching silently with banners saying something like "We're watching you" or similar.

You'd have to make sure that you wouldn't injure the target with that many beams in the same place, of course - would getting 20 of those in the eye at once be harmful?

And it might not be a good idea if you tried it against a high-profile person -- for example, George is currently visiting here in London at the moment; the reaction from the police and Secret Service is unlikely to be favourable..

Take out security cameras.

[(H)elix1]

Take out security cameras in a good chunk of downtown London....

Laser pointers nicely mess up video camera... It probably won't hurt the camera, but here is a fun read if you have a bit of time on your hands.

Re:Just look at Hollywood...(or: are you paranoid?

[DiscoFreq]

You can make an attraction of this; a room full of this, and people have to try to get through it without starting the alarm.

You can make the beams visible with some kind of fog, or keep them invisible (they just have to look at the pointers and the sensors), then it would be funny too see those people step over invisible fences and so on :)

Scrolling Message

[bpb213]

Hook them up in a grid, all pointing in one direction.
Make this grid 7 rows high, and 17 columns long.
Then you have a projectable scrolling display.

(with of course the right hardware to turn the lasers on / off at the right times.)

Garden

[skinfitz]

Set them up in your garden so that they form a grid with sensors to detect when beams are broken. Write some software to generate a grid reference from this data so that any object breaking the beams can be tracked to it's sector - B6, E2 etc. Draw a diagram of the grid and print it out. Send copies to your friends.

Output the grid reference to a web page - it should now be relatively easy for your friends to track your exact position in the garden while talking on the phone

Re:Point them to a single location...

[cei]

Hell, attach mirrors to the speaker cone and point them at that from different angles. Play music through the speaker and instant light show!

Audience Participation

[Tom7]

"Monzy" has a bunch of good games that can be played (see bottom) when the members of a movie audience have laser pointers. Just make sure you get them back before the movie starts. ;)

to do with too many lazers

[cgenman]

Attach about 30 of them to two gloves, and go dancing.

Attach an AC adapter and mount a row of them above the front door, aiming down.

Give them away at a local school. The teachers would love that.

Drill holes into a thick wooden board, mounting the pointers upwards under a sheet of transparent plastic or glass. Sacrifice an audio LED controller or two to synchronize the beams to music. Learn to dance.

Attach them all to a single trigger, and mount them together with a large amount of tape. Keep in your glovebox. When someone cuts you off, aim at their rear-view mirror.

Build your own really inefficient 3D scanner.

Can you say, Flash Mob?

Musical instrument

[cybermace5]

Put them all in a frame, each pointing at a phototransistor, and link to a frequency generator or microcontroller with MIDI output. Now you have a laser harp.

In fact, here's a very informative website on the subject: The 250 laser harp project. Includes links to different projects, schematics, part sources, etc.

Make a replicate of the belagio's water fountain.

[Alpha27]

I may not have spelled the casino's name correctly, but if you know, the casino has a huge water fountain feature in front, programmed by computer to perform a 20 minute show. You could replicate this using the laser lights, some motors to dirct the beams, and build it inside a plexiglass box with smoke to show the laser lights.

Posting anonymously?

[breon.halling]

Sorry if this is slightly off-topic, but I'm the submitter of this article, though I did so anonymously. Is it standard Slashdot practice to change the submitter's (anonymous) name? If you'll notice, the article start "lazed-dazed asks: ..." instead of "Anonymous Coward asks: ..."

Just curious.

Tetris

[cgenman]

Buy (used) a TI-85 and an LCD projection filter. Make a 12 x 20 array of closely-packed Lazer pointers.

Play tetris on the nearest available building.

Pimp your car

[dpu]

just attach/tape/staple/weld/whatever all the lasers to the undercarriage of your car, pointed downwards so no one lying in the road pretending to be a speed bump gets blinded. course, you'd need to wire up a road-worthy electrical harness for them to run off your car battery, and have a remote switch inside so you can turn them on and off. or have a little micro-controller to turn the lasers on and off in patterns :) now i want to do it....