CL-16RGY scanner review

Well I finally got it:

First Impressions

The scanner is very well made, with a nice silver finish and is impressively heavy. Mine received some damage during transit , but a new front cover is being sent to me, so I will leave it at that.

The unit is badged at 140mw combined, red 650nm @100mw and green 532nm @40 mw, with combined yellow output rated @140mw, but without ripping the thing apart I am unable to verify this. Unpacking the box reveals the scanner, a power lead matched to your country, as well as a DMX control lead.

THE DISPLAY:

Simply Awesome, did I leave any doubt? Simply awesome. With a little smoke this is a real Nightclub Laser . It comes with over 500 different patterns on auto mode including Tunnels, liquid sky effects and many more and in music mode this is just amazing, changing the beam patterns with the beat of the music.

I have not tried this in DMX mode yet, but the instruction book that comes with it , explains every dmx channel and its address to control the colour , the scan speed and the power of each laser.


Powering up for the first time, the scanner is set to preset pattern mode, with the aid of the dipstick controls on the rear. the First thing that strikes you is WOW this thing is bright and the scanning angle is simply huge. It will cover a wall 9foot wide and 9foot high at about 4 foot distance. This is achieved with a very large and long XY stepper motor scanner.

The case

Very high quality silver metallic finish , with countersunk screws to hold the panels together, it comes with vertical overhead mounting bracket with rubber washers to minimise vibration to the case. There is a power on LED as well as a sound activated LED on the front cover as well as a power lED on the rear cover above the DMX dipswitch.

On the rear of the unit there is an input for 110v / 240v ac power , a 10 position dipswitch to access modes and DMX addresses directly. A dmx in and out port for assigning the unit as a master or a slave to link up other devices.

There is a fairly sized CPU type fan to force cool the whole unit to give a decent duty cycle on the unit (advertised at 4 hours) on.
The Cons:

OK you have heard all the pros, so now here are the Cons. The yellow on my unit is not as defined as I expected, but it is definitely yellow and looks great (the green is a little overpowered on mine I think)

Secondly the noise of the scanner, it is actually quite loud. the stepper motors make a fair bit of noise when they are doing their stuff, but a bit of loud music cures this .

More pics and a vid incoming in Pt 2

Jase

The back

Jase.

Well my camera has let me down, the green totally overpowers the CCD in my camera, making the red and therefore the mixed yellow almost invisible, but you will get a good idea of what it does.

Stills seem unaffected, so I will try and take some tonight.

Jase.
http://s199.photobucket.com/albums/aa173/Tallaxo/?action=view&current=RGY.flv

great review!!!! the green does seem a bit overpowering, but the scanner makes orange sometimes too, by turning down the green, i love the greenish yellow colour anyway. maybe i could get some pics for you since your camera broke? i am getting a DMX controller sometime this week, so i'll let you know what its like! continue on wih the great work!!

you can't even see the yellow in the vid?????? that's wierd :-? :-?

EDIT: i will probably have the DMX controller tommorow, so i'll let you know how it turns out!!! This is the controller i'm getting http://balancedtech.com.au/enttec/index.htm it's the DMX/USB Pro Interface one.

Aye Things my camera will not pick up the red or yellow at all even though they are very bright to the naked eye. Feel free to add some pics to this review, as I know your camera works well.

Jase.

PS keep me posted when you get your DMX controller.

i'll find some good pics to add i emailed david, and he said there was no clear window infront of the scanners, so i got that sorted. i'll definately let you know how the dmx turns out, it better work, it was a fair bit of $

here's a cool pic. i'll add some more tommorow when i get the DMX controller, then i can get some better timed pictures.

hey jase, i just had a look over at CPF and another guy did a write up on this laser show! from his pictures, it looks like his got a bit scatched up too. Anyway here it is http://www.jtice.com/blogs/cl-16rgy_laser_7-23-07/

Thanks for linking that Things . His video certainly shows up the yellow better than my camera can. All things said and done though I am very impressed with the unit . It is very solid and well built and with a little fog the display is simply mindblowing.

A great product.

Jase

by the looks of it, his has a few scratches behind the scanners too??? is the scanner section painted black in your one?

Aye the scratches are similar to mine, I am now guessing it is part of the alignment process as each mirror has alignment screws on the shaft of each stepper motor . Very similar to the alignment screws on a telescopes finder scope.

Jase

oh ok!! well the company i ordered the DMX controller from, their fax machine has broken, so i had to place the order manually. they will be shipping it out tommorow, and it will probably arrive tommorow. So once i get it, i'll give some info on it

well my DMX controller is going to be here in about 1 hour, so i'll have a little play around with it, then let you guys know! DMX works on binary, so i have to learn some of it :-/

Jase --

I've emailed Laning about three times on this scanner and no reply. Maybe I have the wrong address .... How do you reach him -- Phone ??

Mike

are you emailing him through ebay? his name is davidlanling on ebay, and his store is lanling-tech.
hope this helps