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Interesting Items...

What two beams? I think there's only one. Imagine the calibration problems of having two x-y scanning mirror heads trying to make two incredibly fine laser beams intersect at a specific point in x-y-z space, at video frame rates.

I don't see how intersecting beams would do that anyway.
 
Then come up with a better idea.;)
There also must be some media on which to 'draw' the subject as you have implied before.
Two or more intersecting beams is how they do lots of things to have an effect without affecting other material around the target point. And two beams would 'light up' stuff more than one.
 
Does it look like two beams on that video? Not to me. And two laser beams coming together can subtract just as well as add.
 
Black Hole said:
And two laser beams coming together can subtract just as well as add.
Click to expand...
Yes, that might be how they are doing it. I can't say definitively there is only one beam on that demo.
But I agree, it's not clear ... but then again they aren't going to give enough away to allow a competitor to get a foot on the ladder (unless they are rather stupid).

Or maybe it's a hoax/con. Despite what they say I'm doubtful of serious applications unless it can be scaled up to full colour, hidef in a significant volume (eg. a 1m cube). Otherwise it's no more use than a '3D' display on a normal screen.
 
Black Hole said:
And two laser beams coming together can subtract just as well as add.
Click to expand...
Yes, I realise that, but they can obviously be set to add otherwise multiple targeted beam operation would not be possible. Think of etching inside a transparent substrate.
 
That's done by using optics to expand an intense IR laser into a wide beam (little power per unit area), then focussing the wide beam into a point (extreme power per unit area) within the acrylic block.

In any case, all this postulating of multiple laser beams converging at a point doesn't explain what the emitter array underneath is, or why the image breaks up when a hand is waved beneath it. You will notice the image doesn't just disappear (as it would if one of the beams was blocked), but instead wobbles (as one might expect if the array is creating a modulated property of the free air).
 
MikeSh said:
Despite what they say I'm doubtful of serious applications unless it can be scaled up to full colour, hidef in a significant volume (eg. a 1m cube). Otherwise it's no more use than a '3D' display on a normal screen.
Click to expand...
I agree there, it's a plaything. But it's still cool!
 
Or even titilating it with a laser

I like the idea of hacking in and playing a game of laser cat bowling!
 
'Safely out of harm's way on a tripod'?? Obviously not a cat owner then :roflmao:

I was disappointed at the laser bit - I thought it was going to have little wheels under it and run around (thought it would actually need wheels on all six sides to be successful :) )
 
That's a very annoying web site. A pop-up obscures the details and won't go away unless you accep the terms of use.
 
I couldn't be bothered so I am missing out on the charms of air selfies. But as I haven't had my lips plumped to the ridiculous and had my brow de-furrowed with botox, I don't think that I will bother either.
 
That's very interesting... the inclusion of two blasters gets it more-or-less worth that money (discount price). I'm not clear what powers things: two AC adapters are listed (for the blasters?), but the handset has a charging station so does that have an AC adapter or what?

Like a cordless phone though, the handset is going to be pretty much confined to the room that has the charging station in it. The phone app makes up for that.
 
Black Hole said:
That's very interesting... the inclusion of two blasters gets it more-or-less worth that money (discount price). I'm not clear what powers things: two AC adapters are listed (for the blasters?), but the handset has a charging station so does that have an AC adapter or what?

Like a cordless phone though, the handset is going to be pretty much confined to the room that has the charging station in it. The phone app makes up for that.
Click to expand...
It will be like the Harmony Ultimate. A microUSB charger for the remote, a microUSB power supply for the hub. The other two blasters plug into the hub, enabling you to extend a signal to several pieces of equipment in a cupboard, and also to route commands to a particular box if you have several with the same IR language.

As far as I know, this remote only works with Philips Hue lights, eg, set up an activity to watch tv and dim the lights. The socket buttons must be for some other supported smart sockets.

High price and no advantage over the harmony touch/ultimate put me off and Amazon haven't offered me a free one yet! The ultimate is already quite sophisticated and has motion sensors and a touchpad screen so it can control gaming devices such as a Wii. The RF built into the remote, to communicate with the hub, also allows it to control some other devices directly, eg, Amazon Fire.
 
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Here's something I've recalled from a past life, I don't remember having mentioned it here before:

The 13th day of any month is more likely to fall on a Friday than any other day of the week.

The Gregorian calendar has a 400-year cycle: there's a leap day when the year is divisible by 4 unless it's a century year except when the century is divisible by 4. This is to keep the year in line with the seasons better than the Julian calendar (which has a leap day every 4 years regardless). Work that out, and by pure coincidence it transpires that the number of days in 4 Gregorian centuries is an exact multiple of 7.

If the Gregorian cycle and the week had no common divisor, the days would progress each cycle and it would average out. But they do have a common divisor of 7, so they are in lock-step. Work out how many times in the cycle the 13th of the month falls on each day of the week, and there is a very small bias to a Friday.
 
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