amature "Floyd Droid" project.

[pigeon_boy]

Hi I'm new here so Hi. I'm amazed I've actually found an active lighting forum, I don't have facebook and was worried anything like intelligent lighting discussion would be on some FB group.

 

Anyway, I want to know if it's possible to make my own floyd droid. nothing made up from scratch but using existing products. .... ok this is more of a sort of disco light than what you guys are into BUT it has DMX! the equinox scantastic 4. I plan to get 2 of these and link them together with an XLR cable. and also by some controller ie. chauvet dj Obey 40. now in theory I can just straight-out-the-box start programming both simultaneously with no problem.

 

Before some one asks what a "floyd droid" is, it was a special light fixture (4 of them to be precise) for Pink Floyd during their 1987-1989 tour. They looked a bit like robots and raised up from the stage floor, they were big boxes with 8 scanning mirrors inside, that could bounce off light like a laser would - the light source may or not be laser? it was xenon or some secret-recipe light source anyway. They were SO cool and unusual to look at. I believe 2 companies made them as a joint effort, Colour-Rays and LaserMedia.

Here's a video of them in use:

 

skip to about 4 minutes

sorry if the music isn't to your taste, as it happens I like PF so.....

 

So I'm thinking this is how I could set it up (with a bad ms paint diagram!)

The next problem is the programming of each 8 mirror! I want 8 beams twisting round in half of a circle cause I believe that's what it's doing here. I've been learning about DMX controllers and the whole scene, banks, chase, 512, address. and all this stuff. I'm guessing I'd need 24 channels used in ONE scene. so pan and tilt x 2 that makes 16. then an extra 2 x 4 for the colour that = 24. Is this possible? Then I need to draw a circle on a massive bit of paper, hang it on my wall, map out about 30 dots on the circle where I want to the beams to fit and then a very long trial and error guessing game with all 8 of the pan/tilts. Notice the ALL 8 beams are always on, and the colour red never gets used.

 

HOPEFULLY the chase on the controller and the mirrors are fast enough to give off a laser like effect like on the actual floyd droids.

I can hopefully get a chase to repeat/loop, is that what chases do anyway?? and control the speed with that slider.

Then I plan to hide the scantastic 4's in a box and do the cool looking 4 slits on the front. I'm not gonna go the whole way and have it mounted on a moving crane though.

 

I'm beginning to think is this even worth it haha.

Edited November 11, 2019 by pigeon_boy

[James Remo]

As you are looking to assemble this from pre made units there are fixtures out there that are more akin to the laser emulation that was the original idea behind the Floyd Droid. The ADJ Ricochet being one example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b4q4CfxuYM

The Elation Sniper 2r being another

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYD2-3Ru2c0

Both employ a pair of mirrors per beam to create the fast scanning effects. This will obviously push your budget but you will achieve the effect you seek, where as the units you have in mind don't even colour mix, you only get beams of unmixed red, green, blue and white blobs.

 

Control wise the easy way to program effects like these is with a desk that does the work for you, something with an inbuilt effects generator. But again that's going to be more expensive

Edited November 11, 2019 by James Remo