You forgot the thrill of a teetering ladder! And hoping your insurance is up to date or not being voted into oblivion.
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I get that leaving projectors around is a security risk, but also i don’t think the projectors should be pricier to do the basic functions they do for home lightshows. Sure they should be built for outdoors if you leave them outside, and have some sturdy way to lock them down, but they shouldn’t be pricier because they can play a video loop on a quad.
I make a projection mapping app for iOS aimed exactly at that problem, I think this stuff should be a lot easier and possible with projectors and iphones that can be borrowed or scrounged. Plug : The Reality Augmenter .
For these sort of home effects, I would really love it for people to feel like they could do stunning displays on the cheap. Felt like if they bought a bit of window frosting from a diy store they could up the ante on their halloween displays.
A couple of youtubes of some of the window mappings I’ve done using my app:
A Halloween display
Freaking out my neighbours
Were done using static adhesive window frosting, and reverse projection from a short throw beamer, but all consumer level. My app even offers wireless connectivity through google cast and airplay, google cast is especially useful if you want to put the beamer in an odd place.
Anyway, I love that these little laser things and specialised projectors exist, but sad that people don;t know about my app who might be interested in it otherwise.
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I’m never going to hang lights on our house or outdoor trees due to disability issues, so these gadgets piqued my interest when I first found out about them - but I’m probably too much of a scrooge (the ill-tempered, miserly version) to ever actually buy them.
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These things are objectively horrible. They say, ‘I’m going to show holiday spirit, in the most passive and consumerist way.’ They are the opposite of making something through your own ingenuity and resourcefulness, which I have always admired you for, and which seemed to me to be something you promoted. I guess the bar is lower for something you are paid to promote, but this has the feel of a selling your birthright for a mess of pottage sort of descent into degeneracy. Happy Holidays!
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I would just like to point out that anyone who objects to these things on their aesthetic merits is hypocrite of the highest order. Christmas decorations have always been about the gauche intersection of consumerism and neighborly spectacle; to claim that laser projections are somehow objectively more of an eyesore is missing a bedazzled forest for a single fake plastic tree.
The only intellectually consistent positions are to embrace the entire spectrum of ostentatious crap we do to our homes in the name of being “festive” or to denounce all of it for what it is.
But this is a stupid point at which one should draw the line.
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Are there no tree-decorating drones?
(Before clicking “Reply”, makes google search)
Oh … there are:
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Yeah…but they ugy though.
My concern with these laser projectors is that they can harm someone’s vision. You would be pointing it toward your house, and people have an innate reflex to want to look in the direction of a light shining toward them even for a second, which is all you need to cause lasting damage from a laser
If it’s the only thing you do to decorate, then sure they can have that effect.
Seriously though - try shining one up at a tree, the light glitters off the branches in a way traditional lights can’t do, especially in the snow. These also let you decorate trees too tall or too big for most people to the old fashioned way.
Our neighbors point a pair of them at the front of their house every year. The house looks infected, not decorated, so we’ve taken to calling it LaserPox.
As a plus, we’re six miles south of MSP airport, and these lasers shine east in the direction of the final approach path to runway 35. Not all the pox marks hit the house; many leak to either side. I have no idea why the FAA hasn’t stopped by to have her unplug the things.
Now if you’ll forgive me, I have to go. There are kids on my lawn, and I have to tend to my humbug collection.
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why wouldn’t you just buy a real projector and then program a video to loop that looked a lot nicer?
A “real” laser projector (example) will cost thousands of dollars, won’t be designed for outside use, and won’t cover the whole of a house.
Clark Griswold disapproves.
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