Question,

WolfMax

Member
In a post on PhotonLexicon forum, I was told that Pangolin and the official producers of IShow (Xinyulaser) have some sort of agreement in place. With this in mind, I was wondering if QS could be updated to control the IShow DAC in a limited capacity? For example, limited to beam shows/atmospherics, specific zones, limited frame rate and colour (I'm not sure if the DAC is TTL or the IShow software).

If both Pangolin and Xinyulaser are looking upon QS as the progression from Ishow, is it not feasible that QS should incorporate IShow DAC in some form?

Cheers

Colin
 
In a post on PhotonLexicon forum, I was told that Pangolin and the official producers of IShow (Xinyulaser) have some sort of agreement in place.

We thank you for your question and we consider it to be a good quesiton.

First let me say that, for sure, there is no agreement in place -- other than that iShow can communicate to its users that "If you are looking for greater power, then you should consider QuickShow".

However, this message is lost in the translation (both from Pangolin to Xinyulaser, and also from Xinyulaser to its users). Therefore, instead of communicating the proper message, people are instead being confused in the marketplace.

We have taken steps to try to clarify the situation, and are continuting to take steps. To this end, please let us know where, on PhotonLexicon, you have seen that post, so we can lend some clarity in that place as well.

With this being said, for sure it is not possible to run QuickShow on any hardware not made by Pangolin. This is not because we want to be mean, but rather because of technical reasons that we're always glad to share, because it shows a certain degree of technical prowess on our part.

The FB3-SE, FB3-XE and FB3-QS have literally no memory chips or buffers inside. These operate over USB using a unique and innovative technique called "direct feed". This means the CPU manages each and every sample that is delivered from our hardware, 100% of the time. This is done using a unique driver and threading model we developed years ago, which gives VERY STRONG SYNCHRONIZATION (actually down to the nanosecond -- which I am sure is hard to believe, but happens to be true) but also requires very little CPU overhead. Just bring up the Windows Task Manager and you will see the tiny amount of CPU required to run QuickShow. (BEYOND can run 24 FB3 on a single computer, still while consuming only a moderate amount of CPU power.)

The benefit of our "direct feed" method is that the timing that we are able to achieve provides projected output quality that is unmatched by competitors. For this reason, animations are prefectly smooth.

By comparison, all competitors we know of use a simple "double buffer" approach, whose "resolution in time" is not very high. Using this method, a computer is not able to act in the basis of data samples and -- at best is able to act only on the entire collection of data samples (the buffer length). Because of this, and other reasons, the results are not nearly as smooth. Aminations, and particularly scrolling text will appear jerky.

This "double buffer" technique is something that I first did while in my junior year of High School (1982), so it is quite old and quite primitive compared to our "direct feed" techhnique.

Moreover, the core of both QuickShow and BEYOND take full advantage of this "direct feed" method in its very core, and this portion can not be re-written to work with the primitive double-buffer techniques.

Because of all of these things, I am afraid we can't make QuickShow or any of our other software work on other people's hardware.

One of the things that Pangolin sells is quality. And we are able to deliver this quality at an affordable price.

Best regards,

William Benner
 
Hi Bill

Thanks for the reply.

As for the post in PL, it seems to have gone. It was in response to a post I made when I saw the Pangolin logo displayed in Ishow and thought the Ishow producers were trying to make out it was in someway associated with Pangolin. The reply was what you stated above about the message suggesting QS for greater power. I miss read it as Ishow suggesting QS as an upgrade path. Hence the original question. I fully understand the fact that the methods of control are chalk and cheese. It's just a shame my Ishow hardware will now gather dust where it could be used for my less capable TTL lasers as beam show units.

Oh well, looks like I'm saving up for another FB3-QS (how much is a FB3-SE in UK £'s)? ;)

Cheers
 
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