I guess it's less of a tutorial and more of a mod. I bought a Pocket Laser Show from Thinkgeek this summer, figuring it looked pretty cool for 15 bucks, and I could probably modify it with little difficulty. Well, that's exactly what I've done, and in this (very short) tutorial, I'll show you how stupidly easy it is to mod this thing.
First, we have the unit itself:
The red dials control the spyrograph in manual mode, and the two grey switches on top are to change the direction of the rotation of either of the two mirrors. On the bottom of the unit is the power switch, which has 3 settings; Off, Manual and Auto. Auto will, as you can guess, display a pre-programmed show every time, cycling through different patterns and stuff. It's not incredibly mind-blowing, as there are only 2 mirrors, but it works pretty well for 15 bucks. If you press the red button, its the same as switching it to Auto, except it stops as soon as you release the button.
quote thinkgeek:
On the bottom are 4 screws, actually 5, but the fifth is for the battery compartment and doesnt need to be removed to take the thing apart. Remove all 4, and you'll be greeted by this:
I actually replaced the small 2-5mW red diode for this picture, you can see it on the top right, pointing toward the first mirror. It's usually screwed in, but I took it out and left it inside the case for the sake of being lazy. It's not like I'm gonna melt my case with a 5mw red, so whatever.
This picture shows the hole I dremeled in the side of the unit, so I can point my lasers in from outside, in the same way the original red diode was pointed at the mirror.
Probably the easiest mod I've ever done, so much so that I hesitate to even call it a mod. Actually finding the damn laser show in my house took longer than the actual process of modifying it. Take some screws out, use a dremel to carve out your desired hole size (I made mine a little bigger for my Spartan my 150mW Kryton blu-ray) and you're done.
First, we have the unit itself:
The red dials control the spyrograph in manual mode, and the two grey switches on top are to change the direction of the rotation of either of the two mirrors. On the bottom of the unit is the power switch, which has 3 settings; Off, Manual and Auto. Auto will, as you can guess, display a pre-programmed show every time, cycling through different patterns and stuff. It's not incredibly mind-blowing, as there are only 2 mirrors, but it works pretty well for 15 bucks. If you press the red button, its the same as switching it to Auto, except it stops as soon as you release the button.
quote thinkgeek:
On the bottom are 4 screws, actually 5, but the fifth is for the battery compartment and doesnt need to be removed to take the thing apart. Remove all 4, and you'll be greeted by this:
I actually replaced the small 2-5mW red diode for this picture, you can see it on the top right, pointing toward the first mirror. It's usually screwed in, but I took it out and left it inside the case for the sake of being lazy. It's not like I'm gonna melt my case with a 5mw red, so whatever.
This picture shows the hole I dremeled in the side of the unit, so I can point my lasers in from outside, in the same way the original red diode was pointed at the mirror.
Probably the easiest mod I've ever done, so much so that I hesitate to even call it a mod. Actually finding the damn laser show in my house took longer than the actual process of modifying it. Take some screws out, use a dremel to carve out your desired hole size (I made mine a little bigger for my Spartan my 150mW Kryton blu-ray) and you're done.
