animatronics question

[Guest paulrevelcet]

Hey all, first let me say that I am very , very, new to the world of midi and may need some help with the terminology, now on with the question.

I plan on using the midio 128 to set up an animatronics display, the motion will be programed in using cake walk, now from what I understand I can mix a wav file in with the midi  for the voice and background sound, is there any way to record the bit stream of the midi pluse the background sounds and voice and play it back without a computer? I know a sequencer will handle the midi but I need some way to have a stand alone box that will do midi and sound? any ideas? thanks

[Screaming_Rabbit]

... a Laptop with Cubase, Logic or what ever  ;D

... or a standalone HD-Recorder (one of those "can do everything" personal studio-boxes.

Greets, Roger

[Guest paulrevelcet]

Ok, that sounds great, is there a way to hook up a motion sensor to a DIN module and have it trigger the software on the computer to play a digital audio and midi mix? and for my very limited application, would Jazz++ do what I needed? which is to trigger playback with the sensor? all help appreciated.

[smashtv]

Hi Paul!

I just completely clued in on your project, I -might- have helped design the control electronics for your show (I did some engineering work for one of the many incarnations of ASC, who built most of the Showbiz and Chuck E Cheese animatronic shows).

I cut my teeth in animatronics on a showbiz show and went on to re-engineer things a bit for them so the techs (like me) did not spend all of our time changing triacs in the drive cart.  8)

If it's one of my old rigs and you have the all of the parts to it, it's a simple jump from MIDI to firing the existing triac cards.  : )

More info on your your rig please!

Best

Smash

[Guest paulrevelcet]

I have a whole set of the pizza time theater, which includes all the characters, all the clackers, and some drums, plus the large control center that has the real to real tape player, and boxes and boxes of spare boards, ribbon cables, scrs, and other miscellaneous parts, picked them up for 1,000 dollars from a gentleman in ohio.

I am going to split some of them up and use them for various things like being a door greater at the local ymca and maybe make a rolling display for the local dare, I work with a lot of nonprofits in my area doing electronic work.

The reason I am choosing midi is the ease of synchronizing the animation with the sound,or at least I think I will be easy, and if I have duplicate displays, I just need to orchestrate one sequence. Its a big project for me because I am illiterate in all forms of using music software and hardware.  I've been researching this for about 2 weeks now so with any luck and lots of help from the wonderful people here at the forum I can at the very least, learn how to use midi for show control and get my midio 128 working.

[Sephult]

Sounds like a fun project!

I myself built a senior project involving the sequencing of a midi controlled forklift. I  am unsure of what your rig is, but I can tell you that it shouldn't be impossible :)

I basically used a dynapad t200 touchpad with the first version of cubase to loop a sequence.

It was soo simple, each note corresponded to a seperate DOUT to switch over relays for the power to the actuators and motors.

I would say just to use a basic audio/midi program like sonar, and track your audio clips corresponding to the midi sequence for your actions.

I personally have not used jazz++, but I believe you could use any type of stable audio/midi sequencer that responds to transport controls.

You would probably just need to set the sensor as a transport control (Play) for playing the sequence, and some kind of message at the end to set the cursor back.

If I remember correctly, I believe sonar comes default so when playback is stopped and another play command is sent, that it starts from the beginning.

When you get your show up and running you should upload some pictures/video. I lost my old videos for my project, and there hasn't been any documentation of any  animatronics/robot control. I know the community would be pleased to see to your efforts.

--Well good luck  

[Guest paulrevelcet]

Thanks for all the info,  I will document everything and as soon as I have a working prototype, i'll take some pic's and document my efforts. I have unused webspace that I might use, Been wanting to put up a web page, we'll see.