projecting from multiple lasers

Hello.

Pardon my ignorance, but you are the guys who can really help me with your advice.
I wonder, if the following idea will work at all:

I would like to assemble a matrix of 8 x 8 5 mW lasers mounted about 1 inch apart in a grid fashion. At any particular time, only certain laser pointers will be powered. Effectively, I would like to project the letters onto a low cloud or a distant building. For example, when letter "A" is projected, it may require about 15 laser pointers to display it.

My questions are: will I be able to see the outlines of the letters at the distance of several thousands feet? What would be the size of the projected letter (at 2,000 - 3,000 ft distance), if the distance between the first row of pointers and last row of pointers is about 8 in.? Or, by using 5 mW green lasers, I will not be able to achieve what I want it more powerfull & expensive lasers will be required?

Maybe someone has already done somehting similar?

Sincerely,
sadcom

wow 8x8 you mean like 64 laser's . that's alot of laser's . i think i get the idea but at 2,000 ft with 5mw's you proly won't see the letter's . but i could see it work at like 50ft . i'ma try this with some cheap pointer's from the swapmeet ther a buck each and there are pile's of them . the thing is you would have to power them sepretly and trigger "turn" them off or on manuly or in a seqence i think it can be done and would be cool but mabe not at 2000ft

Thank you DTMF, for your suggestion. I thought that the further away, the bigger the letter size can be. If projecting at 50 ft. will there be separate dots, or with 15 or more beaming lasers one can see an outline of a letter?

I intend to use a computer and a controller board to manage the power switching.
Are there places online to get that "cheap pointers"?

sadcom.

Aixiz lasers (www.aixiz.com) sells bundles of red lasers in packs of 50, 201, and 751. Here's a link to the 50ct:

http://www.aixiz.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=1_26&products_id=87

Hope this helps..

EDIT: Should have payed more attention to where this post is placed. I assume you're looking for green lasers, in which case the above site won't help you. www.o-like.com has packs of 3 5mW green modules for $36 here: http://o-like.com/b2b_cpinfo.asp?id=839. That's the cheapest I know of for decent quality modules.

This would be very difficult to do with any power lasers. To make it work, every laser beam would have to be aligned correctly. The slightest degree off at that distance, and the letters will become a jumbled mess of tiny dots.

Unfortunately, 5mW (especially of red) will not be easily seen at that distance. Green may work better, but you'd still have the above problems. Controlling it, I would think, would also be difficult to do.

If you want to project words onto clouds, a 1-3W green scanner would be the best option... Unfortunately, you won't find those on sale at Wal-Mart.