Case: external crew on (non FB4) lasers

General
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Hi everyone!

I was tinkering about future scenarios and setups on larger scale, as my business is growing and I’m building my website to actively start gaining new, more and more serious, clients.

As we all know, when talking about serious laser productions, unfortunately the mighty industry standard, isn’t a beautifully open protocol for DACs, no no, god forbid multiple types of software could use the same hardware. So far this hasn’t caused any problems for me, however, I can imagine (and know) that bigger artists might take their personal laser operator to ensure the perfect fitting/timecoded shows for the desired style.

Let’s say in a future scenario a festival would book me for lasers (including my gear), am I right to assume there’s basically no way for an external operator (based in beyond) to take over for a specific artist? I already know the answer, but I’m curious how the Liberation community views a case like this, what should happen for this to slowly not be a huge roadblock anymore? All I can think of would be for our favorite monopolist to start accepting open protocol, of which I’ve heard it would be very unlikely. It feels like such an unfortunate restriction for real growth, especially as I don’t see a likely solution that could happen in <5 years.

Of course this is just one of the many applications of lasers, and for myself this isn’t a huge worry, as I’m sure I’ll find creative ways to do bigger shows in the future, but yeah, it’s definitely a thing :sweat_smile:

Very interested to hear some industry insights about this!

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Can’t speak from direct experience about that scenario but I have thought about it as well.. A solution I see is to buy my future “rental house” lasers with only an ILDA input, and make some custom external enclosures for both etherdream and FB4 boards (my thinking is then I rent the laser and the DAC separately based on which DAC they need).

For the touring laserist tied to FB4, I would develop some kind of simple remote network switching board, maybe on raspberry pi, that switches the output to the laser between etherdream & FB4. Then if required I set up both DAC’s plugged into the switcher via ILDA, and when the touring guy comes in, I just hit a button and switch the inputs. Then they run their show as normal, and I switch back afterwards.

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I am personally a big fan of KVANT ClubMax lasers for the beam quality, however, I am not pleased with the new models ommission of the ILDA input. We all know why they are doing this, so we have to use Pangolin software to program shows. While I do use Beyond (as many of my clients use this), many of my personal shows are created in a variety of ways and I record everything as WAV files and send audio to my projectors thru ILDA. I playback my shows using a DAW, like Reaper. I have even moved everything to use Dante (network audio over Ethernet) that is industry standard and does not lock me into a proprietary format. But that seems to be the way of this industry over the past 40 years!

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This is such a great conversation to have, thanks for starting it @mathijslaser! It’s one of the biggest structural problems in the laser industry right now.

The best practical solution today is either:

  • In the US, using X-Laser units with both Mercury and FB4 hardware installed
  • Elsewhere, using something like the Stanwax 3-way ILDA switch board, which can automatically switch between an Ether Dream, FB4 and external ILDA input

That at least gives you a path where an external Beyond operator can temporarily take over the lasers without physically rewiring everything.

On the software side, this is exactly the long-term problem I’m trying to solve.

My current motto is:

Omnia libera inter se

Very loosely translated as:
“All software working with all lasers” :blush:

To move towards that, I’ve built a plugin system into Libera - the open-source laser controller library at the heart of Liberation.

The idea is that proprietary hardware or SDK owners (ShowNET, FB4, Beyond SDK etc.) can create runtime plugins for Libera. Any Libera-powered software would then instantly gain support for those controllers, without the manufacturers needing to open-source their protocols or expose internal code.

I’m also hoping the community can create plugins for obsolete hardware (Moncha, QM2000 etc.) so older systems don’t end up becoming landfill just because the original software ecosystem disappeared.

So that solves the output side - theoretically, Liberation could output to almost anything.

Then there’s the input side.

I’ve made a free open-source tool called Libera Link. It’s the Universal Translator for Lasers! It can ingest an IDN stream and convert it into any Libera-supported controller or plugin. So for example:

  • FOH computer sends IDN over the network
  • Stage computer has 3x Helios USB connected
  • Libera Link converts the network stream into USB DAC output

Effectively turning USB controllers into network controllers. Or making any controller IDN compatible.

I’m now adding more input protocols too - Ether Dream, PONK and others - via a second plugin architecture specifically for ingestion.

That means if your software doesn’t support your DAC directly, you could potentially write an ingestion plugin for that software, and then route it into any Libera-supported controller.

That same ingestion system is currently being built inside Liberation itself, meaning other laser software could stream content into Liberation as a rendering/output engine.

It’s still early days, but between:

  • output plugins
  • input plugins
  • open protocols like IDN
  • and community involvement

…I genuinely think “any software to any laser” is achievable over time.

The biggest obstacle technically isn’t actually the streaming or rendering side anymore - it’s commercial willingness from companies whose business models depend on lock-in. And ultimately, if some manufacturers choose not to participate, history has shown that communities are usually very good at finding interoperable workarounds.

It’s certainly proving to be a very exciting time in the laser industry.

All the best,

Seb

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Ahh yes thats a nice solution to enable a setup for for both! just a shame that fb4’s are so expensive compared to ED’s… I understand that there’s workarounds like these, just feels so rudimentary when there’s a way more elegant solution thats being avoided because of profit maximalisation :frowning:

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Wow, wow, wow, what?? sending wav to lasers? I can kinda, maybe, picture what you mean here, but also this sounds like a whole new rabbit hole to dive into, as I’m comfortable in DAW’s and would love to explore something like this. So many ways to approach different situations and use cases for laser (operation). Inspiring, thank you for sharing!

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As always, thank you for the thorough reply and insights, I’m so happy a platform like this exists to talk about anything (semi) related to lasers and exchange thoughts as a community, it’s such a valuable resource.

I won’t reply to all individual points made, but I’ll absolutely keep it all in mind moving forward, such a great read!

It’s a shame that money (as usual) and the fear to lose some market share is holding back a huge potential in innovation, creativity, collaboration and community.

But, we’re all witnessing the start of something great, spread the word!!! :star_struck:

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