smashtv

This thing is pure dog-and-pony show for some post house to lure clients...Eye strain, back pain, and throwing your shoulder out to select a menu item.....not ergonomic at all. All that money and effort for monitors aimed at the roof? ;) If I had to do more than 5 minutes chained to that thing I would have it up on phone books (raise it a few inches) and kick the chairs out of the room. On faders+touchscreen=redundant I have to disagree....I thought the same until I worked on a Euphonix console, and halfway through the day I realized I was flying the damn thing faster than a normal analog console (with no function layers). :) Best Smash

You can, but the minute anything changes price the value of the whole thing goes out the window for comparison purposes. And then there are the changes in currency valuation, sometimes Mike is cheaper, sometimes I am cheaper, without either of us changing our prices. ;) Yes. Best SmashTV

hehe not cooler, just older (from back when you had to roll your own to X11 on the mac) ;) Very cool. :) Best Smash

Another couple of common ones:Is the optocoupler inserted in the right direction? Is the D1 in the right direction? The PIC did say "Ready." to me and give the correct single upload request before I packed it. Hoping it's something easy and simple. ;) Best Regards Smash

Correct. The average builder won't be able to DIY the boards and buy all needed parts for the prices that are offered in our stores. That is the reason I do what I do. If it were about making money, there would not be enough profit to justify doing this all these years. ;) Price is tied directly to the average of fluctuating component costs on my end, And my tendency to stick with known quality brands on the parts makes this higher than it could be if I were to use no-name parts of questionable quality. A kit builder should -never- have to wonder if a malfunction is due to a bad (but new) part. In that context even one bad part per 5000 is too many. ;) My price is .88€ higher on the DOUT and .23€ on the DIN, so given the rate of decline of the dollar vs other currencies, the difference will probably be automatically corrected sometime next week by the world market. ;D I am trying to scare up some decent deals on these. Cost to stock is very high on these considering all of the sizes/backlight/color variants available. I have to be careful not to over extend myself financially, so properly stocking a few thousand dollars worth of a high cost+low markup item is something I am planning carefully. :) The great surplus deals (like the last one on 2x20s) are few unless you like no backlight. RoHS has made this worse, there are a few good large lot surplus deals here in the US I would be buying for the store if they were RoHS compliant. :-\ Do you mean a parts kit without the board? I already do by special request. I want to keep the order page simple so it's not an option there. I have to comment on your price table for future readers, I realize you know this already but $1 does not equal 1€, and my store prices are in Dollar not Euro. My added text is in RED below and using this morning's forex rates: Best Regards SmashTV

Exactly what I was thinking, so I opened the 4051 datasheet to point at a specific pin based on the symptoms. A0 on the AIN does not = "channel 0" in the datasheet, so I printed the pinout and transposed the AIN numbering to the datasheet "channels". I -planned- to then use the A-B-C pin truth table to try to call one of those pins suspect....but no such luck. :-\ There is a pattern when you look at it via the truth table though: ain IC pin IC channel status input states # # # C B A A6 13 0 worky! 0 0 0 A5 14 1 worky! 0 0 1 A4 15 2 NO WORKY 0 1 0 A7 12 3 NO WORKY 0 1 1 A3 1 4 NO WORKY 1 0 0 A0 5 5 NO WORKY 1 0 1 A2 2 6 worky! 1 1 0 A1 4 7 worky! 1 1 1[/code] It seems the ABC lines are making it to the 4051s just fine. I cant tie it to a specific pin, and I only included the table showing the pattern in case it rings a bell for anyone else. :-\ Looking towards the PIC, how does it act when you disconnect CoreJ5, and touch the pins on CoreJ5 with your finger? Does it seem to be jittering on all 8 analog ins or just 4? Without a doubt. ;) Humor me on these three: Is Core C4 installed in the right direction? What type of MIDI interface ie gameport, USB, etc.? Does the regulator run super hot or has it ever? Best Smash

Try holding the apple/cmd key and left click, if that works you need to look at the preferences in x11.app to see make sure "multi-button mouse emulation" or "3 button emulation" is on. Not sure exactly what your prefs will say since I'm running a way different x11... :)If this does not get your groups moving I'll put same x11+Eagle on another system and poke around. I don't know what trackware is best. I work on too many different machines to do that so there is always a mouse packed with the powerpack. I don't do the trackpad thing (unless I'm driving of course!).... ;D Best Smash

I would run screaming from iScroll if you want a stable system. It is based on some depreciated ADB code (a workaround to make early OSX talk to legacy adb stuff) that could break a lot of things. A quick look at the sourceforge page shows users complaining about it corrupting files and causing finder issues. I witnessed a similar util causing file corruption in pre-osx days, the util worked fine until you pushed the system hard, then the code would cause needed file system hooks to be missed/ignored. Not saying this -is- the cause, but it is the first thing to eliminate as a possibility. A scroll wheel mouse is the only way to fly in Eagle. :) Let me know if it shapes up without iScroll. Best Smash

A big part of "melting" the drum sound into the rest of your mix is careful attention to where each drum sits in the stereo field. Kits with sounds panned to positions way different than common setups just don't sound right. Depending on the sound/genre I usually prefer panning out to the drummers position vs. the crowd's position, since this lets me keep the hihat leaning left (helps retain clarity on junk playback equipment) and allows for keeping things tight during a roll/fill down to the larger toms (so you can spend the low that this eats more in the right side). Garbage in Garbage out is absolutely right, and even a lot of good drummers don't know how to tune a kit. I have done discs with only four mics on a rock style acoustic kit, and I have done them with sixteen live mics on a similar kit. It's easy to see the difference at tracking time between a good drummer and a bad one, but If I do it right and raid the mic box the consumer will never -hear- the difference. ;) There are a ton of studio and live tricks to fatten things up (like ducking your kick out of your bass guitar, mic modelling to fake proximity effect, etc.) but if you have too much fighting for the same range(s) it will never sound tight. Best SmashTV

hmmm..... works as described on my mac (running via X11/xdarwin). Was right click re-mapped in your eagle prefs? or was right click "customized" in OSX? Using a third party mouse w/driver that changes click behavior? (some mouse drivers intercept OSX ui calls to add functionality like one-click macros) "Group":left click+drag to select objects:"Move":right click - has always worked for me, and I would hate life without it! ;) If no groovy let me know and I'll match your OSX, X11, and Eagle version(s) here to dig for the answer. Best SmashTV

No doubt....I had to change the cam sensor on the wife's car (inside the engine), changed some extra stuff while I was in there, and did not realize the new timing chain tensioner pin was 2mm too long (wrong part from the dealer). The pop I heard when threading the 20 odd bolts in the cast aluminum crankcase cover was the cover breaking, splitting all the way across.. :( This cover has several important functions, including holding in the oil and acting as the body for the oil pump. I'm thinking no worries, it's a common old engine, I'll get one from a salvage yard....after a few hours on the phone the best I could do was $250 -if- I pulled it myself (3+hours work) or $400+pulled. grrrrr...... It was late so I could not get the part until morning, so I proceeded to JBweld the cover together, not expecting it to work, mostly for entertainment since I could not finish up. The next day I removed the clamps and was astounded by the strength of the "fix". Way stronger than the metal I was bonding! Still in shock I was able to grind/lap/polish the cover back to spec....still no leaks and that was 3 years ago. Whoop sorry for the long story...... :) Wilba have you thought about trying a "T nut" instead of standard spacers? They are uber-cheap, have much more bonding surface to work with, and cut easily if needed. Best Smash

Hi Guys! Usually when D0-D3 work but D4-D7 does not (or vice-versa) there is a resistor pack backwards on the DIN board......Take a look at this thread for more info. Best Smash

Hi guys! Just thought I would jump in here with some info.....sorry if I am preaching to the choir ;) LTC is simply timecode with absolute position information in every frame of data. In other words, if you stop playback at five seconds somewhere in that frame of timing data you will find something that looks like "00:00:00:05:000". Your DVcam, Older multitrack tape decks, Video editors, etc. all use LTC, but vastly different physical layers/methods to encode and read the timing info. DVcam mixes the data in with the image data (DV format), Multitrack "stripes" it to an unused tape channel (SMPTE-formatted stripe via FSK (Frequency Shift Keying)), Pro video format(s) have it in the non-image portion of the video frame (can be proprietary but usually SMPTE format). In the real world, most LTC devices designed to swap timing with other devices read/generate SMPTE format timecode data. MTC is simply SMPTE timecode data formatted as sysex messages. This dumps a lot of data onto the MIDI bus, so any MIDI I/O used to carry MTC should not be used for any other MIDI data if you want a solid sync lock. The other common sync scheme is "MIDI Clock". The best way to think of this is as a combination of tempo information and Song Position Pointer data. MIDI Clock is relative, meaning if you stop playback at five seconds the timing data has something similar to x Bars:x Beats (making it relative to the start of the song and the tempo). Nothing in there about 5 seconds.... The Wikipedia quote about LTC is not entirely right, it is describing one specific physical implementation/method of passing timecode between devices out of many (the Wikipedia name is describing timing connections common to pro video gear and a lot of audio gear that is designed to interoperate with said video gear) Sorry if my descriptions create confusion, my blood/coffee ratio has not been optimized yet today. ;D So multikigor, what specific devices are you trying to sync? There might be an off the shelf solution already. Best Regards SmashTV

Hi Triple-J! Your link is not working (that site is hard to link to)... These are quite cool. Its a standard IC package that will read the position of a small magnet rotated above it with very high resolution. Basically an encoder with no moving parts where it counts. ;) I don't know how well they would work mounted next to each other (conflicting magnetic fields)....I can dig up more info and spec sheets if anyone is interested, just reply in this thread. Best Smash

In the US usually "machine shop", but beware that a lot of the shops listed in this category are only equiped for automotive related machining tasks (turning brake drums/rotors, machining heads, etc) and lack the mill needed for panels. Best Smash

Just curious, what soft console are you using? Another consideration: DMX is 8 bit, MIDI is 7 bit, so you will lose some control resolution.....But in practice this is not much of an issue for anything that does not need very precise positioning. (in other words you don't want to try to focus a multi-fixture Catalyst projection rig via MIDI, but on a small stage/low trim height you won't miss the extra bit on your automated cans) Best Smash

Usually "vertical milling machine", for the small machines "mini mill" is the term used most often. Many companies import/rebrand Chinese made mini mills, average pricing is from $500usd on the low end and $1000usd on the high side. Grizzly tools is a good supplier, if you don't mind the green color. ;) There are exceptions to the pricing above, like the Harbor Freight Micro Mill @ under $400 ($300 on sale). The questions to ask yourself: Do you mind having to re-position and clamp your work several times for one panel? If yes, a small machine (limited x/y range) is fine. Will you ever want to convert it to CNC? (usually not very difficult, considering you have a mill to make custom parts/motor mounts/etc.) If so get a machine w/a "micro" or "fine" feed Z axis. Also see above about repositioning work, for CNC you usually want enough x y range to mill the whole panel without having to move/re-clamp during the process. While NC is great fun, the time required for setup/file conversion/path optimization is not good for a one-off vs. turning the cranks yourself. The flipside of that is you can't engrave legends without NC. ;) Best Smash

Very well said!Makes my prize package statement sound a bit patronizing. I like Wilba's idea, and the thought of a "highest percentage of recycled/repurposed parts" award. That way maybe a few years down the road I can enjoy a bagel from my MB_Toaster, while sitting on my Seppoman-engineered MB_Sofa. ;D Best Smash

Good on ya Moxi! My vote is for C, but I really like Jim's suggestion......so I'll happily kick in a "prize package" to facilitate best box, best documentation, and best user written app type awards. Best box should probably be more of a recognition type award, since you can spend your way into that. Even though a vote script would make things easy, those are easy to cheat. A thread with votes as individual posts is the best way. Best Smash

Hehe ;D

Hi guys It is probably just faked sender addresses, rather than an open relay. I had this problem in a big way, at the worst getting thousands of non-delivery messages per hour. :( As for getting sued, as long as you make a documented effort to ensure your not funding an open relay you have probably covered yourself legally. It all depends on local law. So far nobody has stepped up to sue me over this, and save a few clueless admins* people seem to understand what is going on. On blacklisting, you can safely assume it has already happened. Mail sent from my domains has little chance of even being seen by people using larger providers.....A huge issue for me if I can't reply to an email. I never imagined that I would need gmail just to get a message out. Turning off the catch-all and defining the forward(s) is very good advice, after you do this your server will correctly bounce all of the undeliverable messages, "Clue sticking" those sysadmins that your address was forged. That will greatly reduce your odds of further blacklisting. * Clueless admins: A few of them were so green that they did not realize my domain was forged, proceeded to yell at and threaten me.....not smart at all considering their own open relays could set them up for legal liability. Very interested in how this plays out on your end Seppo.... Best Smash

Might be my fault....JD was it from my site? Sorry about that, I changed it a few minutes ago. There were still references to the old stuff in my connector table and board map. :-\ Best Smash

Hehe no worries Hexman! ;D BTW the socket head screws are a nice touch. Best Smash

Great work Hexman! But I have to ask (and tease), who is this Tim guy? ;D I know I'm quite scattered, but I did not realize my alter ego was helping out around here....guess I need to find/pay/load him up with more work..... ;D Just pokin' at ya Hex, I'm sure I mistyped something to give you the wrong impression. If not, it's definitely time for me to "rest" Tim aka SmashTV

Sorry about that, while trying to find a good way to explain and say "I don't know", I probably was derailed by something else.....This happens on days that I get 100+ legit emails, it's terrible to admit but often sales questions get pushed to the side while I answer tech questions about kits people have already bought. :-\ For the record: I always support group orders and will help any time I can, But have not been asked this question yet about the new PIC, even in unanswered emails. ;) If you need some help getting the 4685 let me know, but I don't have a known good way to program them yet so you would have to burn the bootloader yourself. I have to agree with the guys that you are jumping the gun on this one, the goal of "Build it, and never open it again." is not met by running early beta firmware. Understood. But you have to decide if you can afford to be on the "bleeding edge" or if you can wait like everyone else. That change took a few of us by suprise, but change is in the nature of this project. Until you have 3 tubes of 4620s on the shelf like me, no whining about chip changes please. ;D (I can only poke fun like this knowing that I was waiting a few days on your for sale post to make an offer to buy them back) Can we put this thread back on topic now? Should I split the availability posts from this topic into a new thread? "Good, fast, cheap, choose any two" Best SmashTV