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LT-L08 9W Laser Stage Light Black
Considerations
A few months ago Tmart contacted me and offered a laser for free for me to review.
I accepted but told them I'd try and write an honest review :beer:
They agreed and sent me this projetor, which arrived last week: LT-L08 9W Laser Stage Light Black - Tmart.com
Note that the time it took to get here wasn't their fault at all - everything takes long to arrive here due to my country's crappy post offices.
Bear in mind that this is my first projetor, as I'm more of a laser pointer guy.
Package
It came inside one of those orange post office paper bags. The bag was internally lined with bubble wrap.
The laser box suffered a few minor dents during the trip but they didn't damage the projector.
Specs on Tmart's site
Features
- It is made of high quality material, durable in use
- Multifunctional lens with red & green
- Energy-saving and environmentally friendly, high brightness
- Astigmatic, impact resistance, non-thermal radiation, safe and reliable to use
- Sound active & auto-mode
- Fully adjustable motion speed
- Quick instant start-up time
- All this wonder and beauty of the night shy happen in your room
- Easy to set-up and operate, fantastic gadget for home party, Christmas etc
- Suitable for home party, discotheque, KTV room, stage, limo, coffee house and other public place of entertainment
Specifications
- Laser Source DPSS Green laser, Red laser diode
- LED Source 3W (Blue)
- Laser Power 50mW (532nm), 150mW (650nm)
- Power Supply AC100-240V, 50-60Hz
- Adapter DC12V, 1A
- Rating Power 9W
- Working Environment 10-40ºC
- Warm Up Time 2-8 mins
- Work Mode Sound activated, automatic play
- Control Mode Manual, Remote
- Dimensions 25.26 oz / 716 g
- Dimensions 4.17 x 4.09 x 2.17" / 10.6 x 10.4 x 5.5 cm (L x W x H)
- Color Black
Package Includes
- 1 x Laser Stage Lighting
- 1 x Euro Standard Charger
- 1 x Tripod
- 1 x User Manual
Box and contents
Here are the specs on the box. It says the green laser is 80mW, also has the wrong dimensions but the wall-wart current is correct.
The box came with:
- Projector
- Handle and 2 screws
- Remote
- US plug wall-wart
- Manual in chinese and english
Here's the english manual. The specs are the same as Tmart's listing. Didn't come with the tripod.
Note that the website says it comes with an euro charger. Doesn't really matter to me as both of them fit my outlets and the wall-wart can handle 100-240V and 50/60Hz.
The wart that arrived is rated for 1.5A instead of the 1A on the listing.
And it isn't an actual charger, for the projector does not have an internal battery.
And here's the remote. It uses a single 3V 2025 batt.
The projector itself is small and cute, I measured it at 10.4cm x 10.6cm x 5.4cm.
Notice that the screws used to secure the handle had poorly cut plastic - fixed that easily with a hobby knife
Front:
Back:
The handle provided is a bit too big for the projector and leaves some extra space on the sides:
Running
The lasers
The green is certainly 532nm and I used a diffraction grating to confirm that the red matches the wavelength of my other 650nm lasers. While this doesn't rule out 660nm, it surely rules out <640nm.
The green power can be adjusted with the pot on the back of the unit. It goes from slightly dimmer than the red to kinda bright.
At max power the main green beam and (depending on the shape) the diffracted beams are visible when pointed at the night sky. Unfortunately my phone camera isn't enough to get a beam shot.
Red power is fixed, seems less powerful than my DX dilda at 200mW. The red beam isn't visible on the night sky (at least not with a lot of lights nearby).
This projector is certainly not eye safe (it uses gratings instead of scanning, so the centermost dot is always very bright). Don't point it at the audience.
The laser doesn't seem to need the 5-8min warm up time. It takes only a couple seconds to turn on after plugging it up and it doesn't seem to get any stronger with time.
The case doesn't even get warm and the air from the fan is cool. I'm not sure if the modules are getting hot, but if they aren't you can probably leave this running for hours. I left it running for 10-20min with no issues (despite the remote issue described below). The wall-wart gets warm, but most wall-warts do
The wall-wart wire could be longer. Haven't measured but it's probably less than 1m. The DC jack is too close to the bottom of the unit - if you use the handle to incline it on a table the maximum upwards pitch angle is very limited (due to the plug touching the table). I think it was designed to be attached to the ceiling instead.
The blue led is strong enough to light up a room, but not enough to blend with the lasers to form cyan/magenta.
The shapes
It can project 8 different shapes by using a rotating diffraction grating. The shapes expand very quickly - they fill up my room's wall from just a couple meters away.
Sorry for the picture quality, those are screencaps from the video. The projector never stops moving the image, which makes it quite difficult to get a clean shot. There's also no way to stop at a particular shape. The specs say it has adjustable speed but it doesn't.
Note that IRL the green doesn't blend with the blue from the LED to make cyan.
Videos
First of all please excuse the quality of the videos. My camera has a very hard time picking lasers in the dark.
First I let it run in auto mode for a while.
The fan isn't very noisy but sometimes the projector does make an annoying rattling noise - I think it has to do with the "shaking" mode in which the motor reverses direction very quickly.
The effect is much nicer than those "starry sky" green/red projectors. The shapes sort of blend together when it's running.
It's important to note that most of the time the red and green shapes are not overlapping (the reason is explained at the end of the review). It only produces yellow if you point it at a very close surface (<10cm). Some shapes do have a slight tint of yellow due to overlap, but it's nowhere near what the videos make it out to be!
At the end of the video I filmed the front of the projector to show how bright the blue LED is. It doesn't have the purplish hue IRL.
At first the remote was working... barely, I had to press the buttons many times to get any effect and it had to be pointed at the projector from the front (which is dangerous due to the lasers). Even while the remote was working the controls were very awkward and it was hard to know in which mode it was.
First I cycled the laser colors (green, red, green + red) and then I turned the blue LED on and off:
Then I tried the modes. It has 6 modes, but the 3 last modes are the same as the first 3 but with sound sensitivity. I couldn't get those working properly.
First mode - rotating and flashing.
Second mode - shaking and rotating (notice the rattling sound).
Third mode - stepped rotation and slow direction reversal (the coolest in my opinion).
The sound mode only works with very loud music even if you turn the sensitivity up. Couldn't get a video because my cell phone and my notebook weren't loud enough to activate it.
After a while the projector stopped responding to the remote completely. I don't think the remote itself is to blame (the batt was reading 3.2V and the IR blinks were visible to the camera). Tried to turn it off and back on but it didn't help.
Inner workings
As any geek can attest, the urge to see what's inside is too great to resist.
It's quite easy to open - just remove the front and back plates (4 screws on each) and then pull the top half of the case free.
Most of the internals are glued in place, including the connectors and screws.
Top view with all the parts:
- On the left is the back plate with the fan.
- On the center/top is the controller board.
- On the center/left are the laser modules, the square one is 532nm and the round one is 650nm.
- On the center/right is the stepper motor with the diffraction grating disc attached.
- On the right is the front plate with the mic (top), blue LED (center) and a small blueish transparent plate (bottom), which might be an IR filter.
I'm guessing it uses a buck driver, as the board has two inductors (bottom/center). On the left are the mode button (top), the mode LED (center) and the IR receiver (bottom).
On the right are the green power pot (top), fan connector (left of the pot) and DC jack (bottom).
The lasers/optics/motor are screwed (and glued) to the bottom case. Haven't tried to remove them.
In front of the lasers is a dichro to combine the beams. They are very poorly aligned, possibly by design (one laser is mounted higher than the other and there doesn't seem to be any way to adjust)
The red laser's pitch angle can be adjusted if you break the glue - I tried a very quick adjustment but it didn't help. The green laser seems completely fixed.
A 5-wire stepper motor rotates the grating, which is divided in 8 sections.
If the plate glued to the front was intended as an IR filter it isn't doing a very good job at blocking 808nm.
Conclusion
Is it cool? Sure, much cooler than the usual $20 "starry sky" projectors.
Is it perfect? No, the issues with the remote are *very* annoying. The alignment could also be a lot better.
Thanks for Tmart for the opportunity to review this projector :beer:
