Review of the Bright Night Laser Light

The Bright Night Laser Light (model S-49) is a laser projector designed to be placed where people can see the beam (not the patterns it creates on the wall). It is sound-activated, so the beam patterns change in time with whatever music is being played at your venue.

It comes in an all-aluminum body, and has two lasers: a directly-injected red diode laser that emits at 650nm, and a green DPSS that emits at 532nm. The lasers are inside the unit, directed (aimed) at mirrored stepper motors that produce the beams you purchased it for.

This is being sold on Ebay as the "Twin Lens Red Green 120 mW Cyclops Laser".


SIZE



This unit is designed to be hung from the ceiling in your venue. So do that, by any means convenient or doable by you.
There is a bracket on the top of the unit with a hole in its center for just this purpose.

Plug the female end of a standard IEC cord (this type of cord is most commonly found connecting your computer to AC power; you should be able to find them inexpensively at a computer store) into the receptacle in the side of the unit, and plug the other end into a 110-130 volts AC 60Hz receptacle.

After a ~five second delay, the lasers will come on. This delay is intentional, to help the unit comply with the CDRH regulations for a Class IIIb laser product.

Be *ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN* the beams do not go lower than the tops of the heads of the tallest person you expect in your venue. 7 feet is a good value here.

A small trimmer pot on the front of the unit can be adjusted with a #0 phillips screwdriver (the one with a 2.4mm shaft diameter from my set worked here) can be turned to adjust the sound sensitivity as desired. The product is set to the highest sound sensitivity as a default (in other words, this is how it is set when it comes out of the box).




Batteries are not used with this unit, so this section will not be necessary



*** CRITICALLY IMPORTANT!!! ***
This particular unit is designed to be operated at 110 volts AC 60Hz. Even though an IEC cord with a 220 volt male plug is furnished with the product, if you attempt to power it from a 220 volts AC line (frequency does not matter), it will almost certainly fail at once - and possibly quite spectacularly so, if this is done. You don't want rats or carpet beetles...I mean...you don't want an unwanted fire.

The instructional material furnished with the product indicates it is designed to be operated from 220 volts AC 50Hz, but please check the label above the power input *BEFORE* plugging it in for the first time just to be sure you won't be sorry.


Here's the plug on the end of the cord that was furnished with the product.

A 2 amp fuse is located inside a small compartment above the AC input receptacle; hopefully this will blow out before any permanent damage is done here, but I can offer no guarantees regarding this.

A duty cycle recommendation was furnished...To maintain maximum laser diode life, the recommended operating cycle is 1 hour on, 1 hour off (50% duty cycle). If you want to run this laser all night it is recommended that you purchase 2 of these projectors and run them in sequence.


Photograph of one of the laser apertures, showing the mirrored stepper motor shafts in there.

The laser apertures are not covered by glass or plastic windows, so curious fingers, screwdrivers, liquid from thrown drinks, shards of glass from barware (shotglasses, schooners, martini glasses, etc.) that had become broken in a fight, etc. can get in there and {vulgar term for intercourse} up the works. I'd have really preferred it if these openings were covered.

This projector is a little different, in that instead of mounting it where the crowd can see the projected pattern, this one is designed to be mounted up high in such a location that the crowd can see the actual beams - fog or smoke is recommended so that the beams *CAN* be seen. It is not intended to be shone directly at the people themselves, but over their heads.









TEST NOTES:
Test unit was purchased on Ebay, and was received on 08-15-06.



UPDATE: 10-27-10
I converted this web page to BBCode and posted this evaluation on several other BBSs.





PROS:
Unique enough to be worth your while
Lasers are powerful enough to be truly useful
Durable aluminum housing




CONS:
Output windows are not covered; in my opinion they should be
AC cord may be incorrect - BE CERTAIN TO CHECK VOLTAGE LABEL BEFORE CONNECTING!!!






MANUFACTURER: Shen Zhen Sik Stage Equipment Co., Ltd
PRODUCT TYPE: Sound-activated laser show projector
LAMP TYPE: Laser
No. OF LAMPS: 2 (1 red, 1 green DPSS)
BEAM TYPE: Varies
SWITCH TYPE: N/A
CASE MATERIAL: Aluminum
BEZEL: N/A
BATTERY: N/A
CURRENT CONSUMPTION: Unknown/unable to measure
WATER RESISTANT: No
SUBMERSIBLE: NO WAY HOZAY!!!

ACCESSORIES: AC cord (*NOT* for 110 volts as this product needs!)
COUNTRY OF MANUFACTURE: Hong Kong
WARRANTY: 3 months




PRODUCT RATING:

Update 07-13-11: Measured the power output of both lasers with my new LaserBee LPM.

Nice review, thanks

But where you say "galvos" you should say stepper motors. The output shown is not from galvos. Galvos have a very much little mirrors, with less inertia to deal with high Kpps rates. Output from galvos is very much smoother. Besides this the stepper motors are much cheaper than galvos, allowing this item to be sold at that price. Generally only ILDA scanners have "real" galvos inside, and Kpps rates stated. Just clarifying this to avoid mistakes. Good job as always

magonegro said:

Nice review, thanks

But where you say "galvos" you should say stepper motors. The output shown is not from galvos. Galvos have a very much little mirrors, with less inertia to deal with high Kpps rates. Output from galvos is very much smoother. Besides this the stepper motors are much cheaper than galvos, allowing this item to be sold at that price. Generally only ILDA scanners have "real" galvos inside, and Kpps rates stated. Just clarifying this to avoid mistakes. Good job as always

Click to expand...

Thank you very much for the clarification on this!!!
I've changed the text in my opening post and the same change will be implemented on my website when I install my daily updates tomorrow morning.

What a piece of crap for $280. I've seen better effects with a mirror glued to a speaker.

Tech_Junkie said:

What a piece of crap for $280. I've seen better effects with a mirror glued to a speaker.

Click to expand...

You know, back in the early-1980s, I made a laser show out of a small fragment of busted mirror loosely taped to the cone of a speaker and a Metrologic ML800 HeNe laser that I got from the State of Alaska (they purchased it for me; I did not kype it from one of their offices!!!)...I got some unusually cool effects when parts of the Pink Floyd album "The Wall" were played through the contraption.

I used a silicone cup cake cup. I cut 4 legs into it, then put a small screw in the center, and glued a FS mirror on it. Then tied the 4 legs to the 4 speaker mounting screws of a PC sub woofer. You could adjust the effects with the volume, and bass boost knob. Worked excellent, and total cost was around $30. I ended up selling it $50.

I'm a Floyd fan too. While I had "Careful With That Axe Eugene" playing and the effect looked like it was writing words, and sentences of different languages across the wall. I had to turn it off, and asked everyone if they saw what I just saw, and the whole room was speechless, LMAO.

I used a 4.00 red, a lego, a pen spring, glued them to a popcycle stick for the grandson.
when I set it on top of a speaker it would wiggle all over the place. Cost $5.00. The grandson was inpressed anyway :wave:

Thats an excellent kid project.

BTTT: Measured the power output of both lasers with my new LaserBee LPM.

Music and Laser fit perfectly together. Both crap. Well done, cool irony.

I have an even cheaper version. I shine the laser at a wall and shake it very rapidly between my fingers. :crackup::crackup::crackup:

I still can't get over the fact that they call something with 2 apertures a "cyclops"

You've got a much nicer toy on the way anyway led

CapeClover said:

I have an even cheaper version. I shine the laser at a wall and shake it very rapidly between my fingers. :crackup::crackup::crackup:

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Sounds interesting. Do you think you could teach me how to do that? :evil:

Guyfromhe said:

I still can't get over the fact that they call something with 2 apertures a "cyclops"

You've got a much nicer toy on the way anyway led

Click to expand...

I got my much nicer toy a short time ago today, and to put it mildly, it just blows this piece of caca right out of the water!!!
:yh::crackup::yh:

The_LED_Museum said:

I got my much nicer toy a short time ago today, and to put it mildly, it just blows this piece of caca right out of the water!!!
:yh::crackup::yh:

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Toldjaso