OPENING DISCO -laser show help

Hello,

I'm opening a small disco and it's separete in 3 rooms. I want to put the laser in a room with this dimension: 5 meter wide and 10 meter long. I know that it's maybe too small area for a laser, but when i see laser sky somewhere for me it's out of this world experience...

I want to buy RGB laser scanner or maybe two because i think that one wouldn't cover much... So my questions are:

1.What power of laser I need? I asked someone on ebay they told me 1.8 watt, so i decide to ask someone who really knows about laser. Is it 400 mw to strong for this application?

2. Is it safe to do crowd scanning if i buy better laser with all security features? It's a near to laser but i thought if i don't need a strong laser and if it's calculated that it's relatively safe.

I'm knew to all of this so please if you have some good advise or can answer to my question please help me.

P.S. Sorry for my bad grammar and spelling :yh:

I don't know much about this, hopefully others will chime in.
A 5x10 meter area sounds big enough to me however there might be areas of the room where you would need to block access.
Make sure your projectors are never placed in a position where the laser light can come into contact with someones eyes.
They need to be aligned and secured carefully.
As far as power, it depends on how bright you need it to be. Take into account ambient lighting in your establishment.

From what I've read here, crowd scanning is rarely done anymore even by experts in the field due to continued
occurrences of party-goers receiving burned retinas and partial blindness.
I would stick to scanning the walls & ceiling.

good luck - be safe - welcome to the forum :beer:

Thank you for your opinion and welcome
It's really hard for me to judge what power I need and other stuff because I didn't work with them neither see them too often. I only learnt something from reading this forum, I hope I will learn much more here.

What do you think is reflection from a window for 400 mw laser dangerous? I read here on forum that glass reflects about 10 %, but scanner is much powerless than pointer so i don't know...

I think i will be able to accomplish full darkness, only UV lamps in the other room, so I don't know is it important for me that red is 638 nm. It's a big question for me would red 650 nm been enough bright for my requirements.

Please help.

For a 5x10 metre area in darkness with a bit of fog, even 5mW would be visible, especially in green. I'd be looking for something 50-100mW. It's still dangerous, but it isn't going to blind you as quickly or easily as a 1.8W laser.

You should only do crowd scanning if you have an dedicated, experienced operator that knows what to do when something goes wrong, and the equipment is fitted with the correct safety features (i.e an emergency off button, interlock, etc)

You should never do crowd scanning with a scanner turned on in a auto or sound activated mode. Otherwise you could end up with a situation where something breaks, like the galvo amps or show card, and you end up with a powerful static beam pointing directly into your crowd with no one to notice and turn it off in a timely matter.

Is then best option that i don't do it? My room is 2.5 meter tall so I thought at first that lasers project beam above people heads and then when atmosphere is at top level then i do crowd scanning for short time.
So i don't is it safe to do it my own at short tim
e (2-3 minutes per party)?

How to do calculation for audience scanning?
Is reflection from a glass for 400 mw scanner dangerous? For pointer I think it is, but scanner isn't focused like pointer.
Crowd will be 1 meter from place where i will put the laser is it too close for that laser power if i do crowd scanning...

I'm to confused :S Help me please

do you really think we can give you advice without knowing your location??
If you are in the USA the legal limit no matter WHERE these are aimed--5mW
read--Milliwatts-five- is the limit--you should quit thinking at all about lasers and get LED lights-- ;-)

I'm from Croatia which became EU members on 01.07.2013. Before EU you could buy everything I use it because there weren't a law which forbid you anything except shooting airplanes with a beam And now I don't know, the law will change because we must adapt EU laws.

Many pubs and coffees use small laser like ADJ micro and galaxian and it's 3b class just like 400 mw laser so law is unimportant and i will not have problem with it till people are safe and there aren't any injuries.

P.S. i know that it's strange for you but many laws in my country aren't respected

I would stick to beams above the crowd or animations on a screen/wall.

If you decide to do crowd scanning make sure you at least have a emergancy off button and someone paying attention and ready to press it if something goes wrong.

Maybe best option is to just give over and don't do it. No matter how fun, amazing and cool crowd scanning is people sight is much valuable.
I thought if I do it for a short time (few minutes in whole party) that there are small chances that something goes wrong.
Thank you for your advice

Thanks for adding your location-
Audience scanning is RARE now in the USA.

It looks like you will not be able to use the 3 meter rule- They make us follow that in the USA even tho there are no people that tall. It is done here like that because s person might standing on a chair or on the be on the shoulders of another person.

So you may want to secure you laser PJ VERY WELL and have the beams very close to the ceiling with, of course, some fog. i have seen also beams flat again but only a few inches above the floor.

prices now on red/green 'twinkle' lasers is very low- some as low as 20$ USD
some of these even have a mic for sound response.

these have rotating diffracton gratings inside so the beams are many and the power for each beam is very low- these would be safe to aim upwards or down on the people. While rotating mirror balls are still very attractive if the laser(s) pointed at them are high power the beams will be too much power. I will send you some + rep when I can for adding your location- We DO have several members not too far from you.


You may still want to make a new thread in the welcome section that introduces you to the forum- you will get many welcomes and links that may be helpful and hear for others living near.


GOOD LUCK!!

hk

EDIT UPDATE

see this---

http://laserpointerforums.com/f37/hello-croatia-83842.html#post1212911