TomHoward

Good afternoon all What with everyone expanding overnight into the world of live streaming, I was wondering if anyone had ever successfully mounted a GoPro on one of these- I've played with them years ago with an old Milford Instruments DMX-Servo board, when we used them to move some things on cue, and it occurred to me that they might be possible to mount on a clamp with a GoPro to allow some pan/tilt (though obviously no zoom). I don't know if they would be stable when in place, or if there'd be too much jitter? I'm not particularly worried about moving them live, more to move between fixed pre-programmed positions. It could be via Artnet or an ESP32 or similar.

Thanks for all the comments above, it makes a great read. We also are camera hunting as we have (no surprise here) recently expanded into needing to do online streaming for lectures, chapel services etc around a large school site. We have bought an ATEM Mini which is working great fed into Teams / Zoom etc and I am looking to find some cameras to match. Currently I have access to 1x GoPro Hero 5 and a couple of £200 domestic Sony cameras which do do clean HDMI out but currently don't seem to output the sound over HDMI. The sound is not a big issue, as we can route it separately on the ATEM. Looking at the Canon range, as above there's consumer cameras for £100-200 and the higher end consumer cameras eg HF G25 for around £400-500. Does anyone know if the G25 kind of range are a great improvement over the domestic, or am I better just sticking with the cheap ones? I'm particularly thinking of things where they might be high contrast light, eg streaming a music concert with spotlights / LED colour and the lighting may not be as strong for video.

Just at the other end of the spectrum, I’ve never managed to get dropout on our X32 stagebox regardless of how bad the cable was. In the early days there was a lot of talk on PSW of people killing AES ports on it with voltage spikes, where one end eg stagebox end would raise and the other wouldn’t, and the isolation on AES ports was weak so would kill the port without grounding via the cable. All of these stories seemed to come from 110V systems with dodgy electrics. We’ve run some exceptionally ratty cable, routes and multiple hops through existing infrastructure and touch wood it’s always worked.

We have many grass marked cricket / rugby / tennis / athletics / running tracks at work and a team of groundskeepers who are very efficient and accurate at marking them out with tapes, pegs, string and push along machines - we had a demo of a GPS system a few years ago which at the time was not very successful, I’m sure they have improved but I wouldn’t write off the experienced ground guys either.

For the original spec cable, might be worth a look at FS cables, they have a coax with 2x 1.5mm and 2x0.22mm and other varieties, in Security cables but it might be worth a dig round the website, there’s dissimilar sized twisted pair + power as well. Pricing we find tends to be okay as long as it’s something they’ve got stock of to cut from - not all the products on the website seem to be stocked and some seem to be manufactured to order.

When you say “don’t come up on the lighting board”, are you familiar with the patching on the board - this couldn’t be a patch issue?

Thanks for that. Is the IR receiver on the front of the device by the chip, and using one transmitter further down the pole hits all four floods? We have been using WS2811/2 pixel tape and Arduino pretty heavily for both lighting/decoration and making digital signage / scoreboards out of it, using tape to make 7 segment displays. Pretty much all made with pixel tape and ESP32s rather than proper arduinos, so input is either via Bluetooth for a scoreboard or via Artnet over WIFI converted to WS281x control. It could be quite straightforward to convert from Artnet or DMX to the IR needed for these floods - that said, if the WS2811 floods are reliable they could be done from Artnet or DMX with off the shelf nodes.

There appear to be some WS2811 10W floods available, although I haven't tried any myself. You might be able to combine these with either an Arduino from DMX or something more off the shelf from SmartShow or similar to control via ArtNet? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000774825265.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.24232f74PJTrfy&algo_pvid=f5804e91-74ab-46b4-b0d5-428ba9352ed3&algo_expid=f5804e91-74ab-46b4-b0d5-428ba9352ed3-8&btsid=0b0a182b15951739232506837efd4e&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_ https://www.tindie.com/products/robg/pixelflood-50w-rgb-flood-light-ws2811-pixel/ Tom, what's your process please? Do you get multiple floods IR with one arduino, or does each flood need one stuck on the front? Controlled via Wifi or similar or pre-programmed?

Can you stack adapters to get from Firewire to USB-C? There seem to be examples online of using USB-C to Thunderbolt then Thunderbolt to Firewire. We haven't used to USB-C yet but we have Thunderbolt to Firewire for our Venice F. Not pretty but might be worth trying before buying a new desk.

The two alternative steady streams of work around our area with similar skill sets seem to be either rigger/technician jobs for BT, or work at a power station. I think I'd either buy an ice cream van or become a builder.

Just in case anyone didn’t see the announcement there’s a 2nd round at 70% to be paid in August.

We've always used the Cloud stuff, eg a Z4 for 4 zone or a Z8 for 8 zones. Then you can adjust the volume for that area on the front of the mixer, or you can fit a RL1 wallplate in the remote area and change the level there. They also allow for switching source per zone, so would usually be fed by audio from satellite box, CD player, radio input, etc, which you wouldn't need in this setup so you could do it more simply. They also have useful features for simple setups like a mic input that automatically ducks the level of the music inputs, and that kind of thing. The products are quite expensive new but there isn't a huge 2nd hand market for them (they're a bit specialist) so sometimes you get real bargains on eBay.

We have big stock of them any thinking about it I don't think I usually loosen the clamp to rotate, just a firm twist. I can't say we've ever had a problem with the lens rotating unexpectedly either, as it's pretty well balanced there wouldn't really be a reason for it to as far as I can tell. A lot of the smaller threaded parts (lens adjustment knobs, lens clamp) seem to be possible to strip with over-tightening as I'd say some of ours certainly go round and round, especially the lens adjustment knobs on the bottom.

We do pretty much the same, QLab for proper playback but we pretty much always use a USB interface even if it's a Powerpoint presentation. The earth loops often get worse if the same laptop is attached to a projector as well via VGA or HDMI. We use these Peavey boxes, I hadn't seen the Balbox linked above which is good to know there's a UK product available. The Peavey boxes work well on mac and PC but you have to order them from America - I think they haven't had CE testing is why they don't sell them here. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/759075-REG/Peavey_USB_P_USB_P_USB_Direct.html

My mind had gone to the Inter-M PAM series, there'd be a 240 and a 360 but no PAM-300. But it does have a name with a hyphen and a single letter..

Given the ATEM doesn't seem to have a Preview out, and you'll be wanted to cue the Blu-Ray maybe before switching to it - could the splitter be sold as a way to get a local HDMI preview (just a cheap monitor) and also strip the HDCP for the ATEM - it's a more complicated setup but sold that way it doesn't have an extra box just for illicit legal reasons.

Thanks for the pointers - when this setup used to be permanent, we had two studio with a Sonifex S2 (about 14 channel frame) and a D&R Airlab 2 as well. We went down to one studio and kept the D&R but I always preferred the Sonifex as they were all soft buttons and it booted into the same state. At the moment it’s gone a bit cold because they were on track to rush through an RSL but it’s all gone cold - at first the priority was disaster relief broadcasting, so they wanted to push ahead with or without the RSL granted - so Ive sourced a transmitter, mast and location - when it comes to the push they’ve now had 2nd thoughts and are waiting to hear back concrete from Ofcom about fast-tracking an RSL. (But they’ve all gone home...)

Aha - I have a load of miniature reed switches from when I was trying to make a lap counter for scalextric, using the magnets that keep the car to the track (it didn't work) - and I could stick a magnet in the underside of the fader knob. I'll try that too. The analogue input is really sensitive and I can get it at home to detect the different between open circuit and a dead short, I was hoping I might get away with using the AC audio signal as the sense, if it is actually sunk by the fader when it is at -inf, and maybe average over a few ms to improve reliability. How it'll behave once it's connected to audio I've no idea though.

I'm just programming up a (don't laugh, it's what I have available in the lockdown) BBC Micro:Bit to use 2 or 3 of the analogue pins to read the value of a the fader on an analogue desk and see if I can calibrate it to work at the bottom of the fader, and if it affects the audio in the fader. I'm kind of hoping since I don't need to read the value properly, I just need to read "either absolute zero" or "not absolute zero" I'm hoping at the bottom of the fader the dead short might be readable, and the AC audio signal might also sink when the fader is at the bottom and not cause a bad reading. It seems to work shorting it out with a paper clip but I'll try it on a desk tomorrow. My first preference might be to use an analogue desk if I can, as I'm not sure how long this is going to be in for or who's going to be operating it, or if there are going to be any computers at all.... It's a setup for a church to replace regular services who are partway though getting an RSL a short notice so it's all theoretical at the moment.

I’d only do that on the analogue, on the digital mixer I’d use the OSC route maybe, sounds quite viable but would tie up another computer maybe. I’m going to have a quick go metering a fader out to see if I can take a reliable DC reading off it which audio is passing through without affecting the audio signal as well.

Thanks all, I might open an old Behringer desk and see what space is inside. We have a Soundcraft EPM but I'd rather but butcher it for the sake of this. I was wondering about Arduino measuring the fader values and then switching a relay on another output but my programming isn't that good. I might break a few wires out from the desk to a case outside of the desk and go from there rather than trying to fit it inside the desk. On the one hand I don't really want to cut the EPM desk, but on the other hand it has much better PFL than the Behringer. On the third hand, the X32 has much more onboard processing that might help with radio production. Is there an off-the-shelf program that would be easy to do the OSC on? I guess I could use QLab but it might be easier just to sack off this off and buy an old Broadcast desk once I've spent a while on it.

I have to put a makeshift radio broadcast studio together for an RSL studio. I don't have a proper broadcast mixer, although I could buy one it's probably overkill. The feature I'd ideally like would be monitor mute on mic channel being raised, pretty standard on broadcast desks I've used, and possibly the 'mic live' light. I have a standard selection of small analogue desks eg Behringers and small Soundcrafts, and X32 consoles. Is there an easy X32 configuration setting to do this at all? I don't think it's a software feature I've seen. Alternatively I guess I could do it modifying a small desk and adding a sense relay or something, or is there an easy way on an analogue desk to confirm if a fader is up? Thanks, Tom

duplicate post

The power draw for the double width segment (for 9 figures) is about 23A max, or 17A with average 5 segments on It's pretty high current draw for a leisure battery giving only 3-4 hours to 50% discharge. I think we'll have to review if it needs mains power, or put a bank of batteries on the field fed from a solar panel to recharge during the week rather than mounting the battery on the sign. (The sign may be installed compared to portable yet) - but we can easily change displays and which text is interpreted from the app.

I got four sizes of digit wired up on a board for checking visibility over distance... Got to take it outside now and stand 200m away from it. I imagine the last segment will be the one chosen but it isn’t really viable to battery power.