That's basically it yes. Well there's no way to apply aftertouch to a laser harp nor is there velocity so it'll be hard coded velocity (might have a pedal control in future). At the moment it will just sent note on and off down the wire. It does this using three shift registers (74LS165) and some extra bits for start/stop bits.
I've got it sending notes to my Triton so far which is as far as it has got. The harp front end works with one note as I don't have a laser galvanometer at the moment (will build one). I imagine it'll take another 6 months yet at this rate. Plus I keep getting distracted playing with the nice green laser I bought :)
Oh cool, that makes sense. I got a cheap pair of laser galvos off Ebay a while ago (ok long time ago) and built a simple epicycloid generator with them and a Parallax Propeller chip [1]. It was pretty trivial to work with, send it a voltage and poof the galvos moved.
Cool stuff. Much cooler than doing it with a scope and function generators!
I looked at galvos on eBay but I felt like I was cheating. I tried using mirror on a stepper motor shaft initially as a test but the scan rate was abysmal and it was a £3 stepper so it vibrated the bearings loose. Ended up widlerising it. I have a pile of DVD drives ready to be recycled though. They have the shafts, bearings, magnets and coils to make a galvo with. Plus some more lasers to play with. Current galvo ideas are based on:
I've got it sending notes to my Triton so far which is as far as it has got. The harp front end works with one note as I don't have a laser galvanometer at the moment (will build one). I imagine it'll take another 6 months yet at this rate. Plus I keep getting distracted playing with the nice green laser I bought :)