TomHoward

Does it start the looping video when powered up, without intervention from the IR remote? The size & menu looks like the Cyclone player but they power up in standby mode and need starting with the remote which is a bit of a bugbear

That has just reminded me of a lockup security guy we used to have who was obsessed with turning everything off. We have several racks with power sequencers at the bottom, he would start at the top and turn off each piece of equipment individually, and at the end switch the power sequencer to shut off supply to all the items. Restarting it you used to get all the 'clunks' of contractors with absolutely nothing happening.

The drawings on the first listing show via a switch, is it IP rather than HDBaseT?

The old InterM PAM120/240/x have external contacts for the typical 'supermarket chime', so it can be chimed remotely from a doorbell / open contact switch of choice if you have one of those amps available Another alternative might to try hack an electronic doorbell if you have an old one lying around that makes a suitable sound

The peavey USB-Ps are great (we have to order them from BHP with international shipping as they don’t sell them here) or ground loop isolator from Kenable should fix the problem. https://www.kenable.co.uk/en/audio-/audio-connectors/audio-adapters/8073-35mm-stereo-ground-loop-isolator-female-to-male-earthing-for-audio-008073-5015972172537.html We had the same problem except in our case the VGA went noisy and the screen started wobbling as well.

They look exactly like named brand, even down to the stupid centre negative power supply socket which means we have to have separate PSUs for named brand ones compared to all other generically 12V powered kit.

http://www.doughty-engineering.co.uk/cgi-bin/trolleyed_public.cgi?action=showprod_T50900 with a 19mm spigot on a half coupler, or the bigger size for a Big Ben http://www.doughty-engineering.co.uk/cgi-bin/trolleyed_public.cgi?action=showprod_T50600 If the 32/38mm isn't a tight fit it will wobble on the top of the stand BUT it seems to wobble much less if the tightening screw is parallel with the T bar so there's at least a flat edge pinched up in the direction of the wobble Or it looks like you can get it in one piece for 32mm also http://www.doughty-engineering.co.uk/cgi-bin/trolleyed_public.cgi?action=showprod_T57220

Thanks. I've also thought about whether steam might work for the effect (I'm not sure but it's mainly for something for the light to catch) so I'll try that too. As I have a whole oil drum I've got quite a large volume so I could probably take the lid off and re-fix it a third of the way down and have quite a large volume to fill with smoke. It's a kitsch 80s reworking of Joesph, all the over-engineered props are to detract from the lack of story and acting, it's through-sung and there are about 3 spoken lines in the whole 2 hours. If the smoking oil drum isn't up your street you're not going to like the life-sized Pac-man ghost or the giant Rubik's cube Joseph gets imprisoned in.

Looks interesting but can you run a vape pen continuously or will it burn out or catch fire? Does the coil generally have any protection against over-run or will it just burn out? Interesting you can run it on standard fog fluid.

Thanks for that, I'd read 'non-toxic' on the pellets but reading back it's 'low-toxic' which is a bit different. I had thought of modifying an e-cigarette but to be honest with the risk of the thing catching fire / exploding I might leave it alone as there seems a lot of power and lithium batteries in those to be hacking about. There look to be battery powered micro fog machines available for photography that should be capable hopefully. I could also cut the bottom out the oil drum, set it in the right place on stage and duct smoke from underneath but it'd mean cutting a hole in the stage, which I'd rather not if I can avoid it.. At the moment I've got 5v battery pack and ESP32 in the drum so I can run a relay to start/stop a smoke machine. There might be something from model trains / RC market also but not sure what the output would be.

I have a scene in a play with an oil drum on stage with a small 'fire' in it. It's a prop set and at the moment it's got LEDs flickering emulating the fire colours. They're not particularly powerful and I'm not trying to light up all the faces around it, just give a little suggestion. If we were to add smoke to the effect, hopefully for the LEDs to flicker onto and lift the colour a bit is there any smoke pellet etc which slow burns for about 5 mins and releases gentle smoke? Or can you put a normal one in a tin or anything and it will wisp out? The other route is looking at battery powered smoke machines but before I over-engineer it I wonder if anything simpler was doable. Thanks in advance

I'd think I'd start with the approach of using cheap headphone amps, or a central headphone amp rack and extend the headphones if the distances are shortish, Behringer X32 rack with outputs, and make little Arduino / ESP32 boxes with 3 encoders hard coded to the bus sends on that musician's mix and send the data over ethernet. But you'd need quite a lot of outputs from the rack and maybe a stage box. Might work if you already have an X32 rack to hand.

How do you manage the content onto them? A web-based system with administration for each TV we've used in the past but to be honest it's more work than needed as you end up creating content for each TV. Dedicated boxes would be nice, but to be honest the enthusiasm isn't there for investing proper money in making this system work, which is why we are looking at doing it on the cheap. Firestick type devices on a wired LAN is the route I'm looking at. However what I'm struggling with most is the cleanest way to create the RTMP stream that needs to be pushed to all sticks. Maybe one or two feeds for all sticks and encode a couple of different streams made up of local playlists. We do use those for temporary setups and art exhibitions etc when we showcase work, and for displays, but for the signage use I think there's too many TVs to make it viable and the content really needs to be updatable from sitting at a desk. These 10 or so TVs are distributed between buildings, some are at height, some are across the road etc. It'd probably take someone over an hour to go around and swap the media on them (and the time beforehand to write that media to 10 usb sticks)

I mean I’m relatively open but we’ve tried a few signage players and basically keeping the hardware running and updating the content on each one is becoming a real resource drag. It’s not something that I think we’ll spend proper money on as it isn’t essential but if we could rig something up same on all machines it could look much smarter than it currently does. I’m wondering if anyone’s tried that approach or if there’s any real reason like data rates that it wouldn’t work. We do however have virtual machines etc available or could spend some money on a proper centralised machine with a decent GPU for encoding a few streams and then throw a cheap player behind each TV.

We have tried a few signage systems and to be honest at the moment our main concern is getting something up & running quickly and making something that’s very cheaply expandable. I think we have given up on putting machines behind every TV as there is just too much administration in keeping them all working. If I could find a way to rip a PowerPoint off Onedrive and stream that PowerPoint to RTMP I’d be away. Currently my best option is to bounce the PP to video every time it’s updated and use OBS on a virtual machine to stream. Generating a stream is proving more complex than the players.

We've always had great service from Kevin Edwards Electronics at Cheadle, although we courier stuff to him from Suffolk as it's still worth our while.

Anderson connectors are genderless, powerpole are modular per core and SB are two-core (usually 12 or 24v) in different sizes Just to add one thing that isn’t immediately obvious is SB will only mate with their own colour connector, eg SB50 red will only mate with red, the keyways are different according to colour to allow separate systems

So we have some digital signage around a college site, about 8-10 TVs distributed all over a local network. Currently they show a mess of different stuff, have a mess of different signage players / devices running on them - some are USB presentations locally, some are on powerpoint with machines behind them and are remote'd into, some are dead as they were on a signage solution that it was decided not to renew the license for. If I were to try tidy these up, I've had the idea that rather than trying to install a complete signage solution, with a PC behind each TV, and some fancy software with screens etc, it would be easier if I just showed the same thing on every TV. Or maybe jut had a choice of 2 streams or something. It's not ideal, but for simplicity it's better than what's going on at the moment. My idea is that I encode a stream somehow, either via OBS, or streaming from a VLC playlist, or other software, into either an RTMP, NDI or other stream, and I put hardware on each TV to decode this stream. NDI could have hardware players at about £150/piece, if I encode to RTMP / UDP I can use an Amazon Firestick with VLC app on and have each TV working for about £30 each. The encoding PC will most likely be a virtual machine on a server, I guess I will have to run an RTMP server on there too. I have no idea how regularly I'd update the content, but it'd be great if it pulled some Twitter feeds etc in to keep it up to date. I don't think I've seen signage done like this, is it common? Is there any real reason this wouldn't work? I can build the scenes I'd need in OBS but doesn't seem to have any obvious way to schedule changing scenes, or looping through a playlist, is there any better software for using to encode a stream?

We build a system with Raspberry Pis that was basically XLR in at one end, out at the other with Analogue XLR in and out. In the end we abandoned it as it was a pain in the arse. It isn't a very helpful comment we are looking to replace with Dante AOIP-22 or similar cheaper eg https://www.thomann.de/gb/dante_avio_analog_output_adapter_0x1.htm https://www.thomann.de/gb/dante_avio_analog_input_adapter_1x0.htm If I was rigging it for a temp system and the network had reliable web access I'd seriously consider just using a unlisted youtube live stream on low latency without video. Using OBS you could encode an audio stream at the input end and each output would only need a browser so could just be a phone rather than Mac mini. You'd need to set it off every night before show but it's zero cost. The other suggestion if you can actually get to the patch panel in the venue and there's copper point to point is also the simplest way, just make up some rj45 - XLR adapters. If you actually need to run over IP and there's fibre or a wireless bridge involved or via multiple switches then you'd a bit stuffed for that one.

I don’t think it is a rumour, I think it’s also part of the change - coupling / uncoupling to be verified by “a third party” rather than an examiner (?) and one test for rigid & arctic rather than progression I believe

Thanks. QSC K8s or similar would be lovely but likely would get wrecked, We have 8x EV ZLX12P that go out as “cheap and cheerful” (one step above disposable) speakers when we think they might be at risk of rain, damage, overdriving or pinching etc. Problem is sometimes even those are just too big if all is needed is a bit of speech reinforcement, or stage monitors to go with when the EVs are used as an entry-level system for busking or similar. We’ll quite probably end up buying multiple pairs so cost is quite a factor , and sitting on its side to make a wedge monitor would be nice. 10” obviously would project a bit better than 8” but I’m kind of inclined to go 8” just as we have a stock of 12” available already Has anyone used the Alto TS308?

B+E trailer rules are changing - tests are cancelled from 20th Sept 2021 and anyone with a post-97 licence looks like they will be granted B+E automatically without a test. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-rules-for-towing-a-trailer-or-caravan-with-a-car-from-autumn-2021 Useful for anyone planning to take it or expand - or staffing at least as to who has to drive which van. Not good news for anyone who gives B+E training as a profession but good for anyone who fits towbars..

We have EV ZLX12P as our smallest speaker, but sometimes they are too big for some smaller things - often say a fast fold screen and 2x speakers for a presentation rather than a band or anything. Does anyone have any recommendations of smaller speakers say 8" in a similar kind of "quality" bracket? I have looked at things like Box Pro: https://www.thomann.de/gb/the_box_pro_dsp_108.htm (layout on the back looks suspiciously like an EV!) dB Tech B-Hype: https://www.thomann.de/gb/db_technologies_b_hype_8.htm This kind of thing - QSC 8" and similar are nice but overkill

The Pixie is brilliant. I have been playing with one today with a string of 50 WS2811 fairy lights. I think it's ArtNet at that price though not sACN if that makes a difference.

It might be worth investigating just how hours a year it is to estimate the payback time with a given saving - just as it’s not a huge load, if you used it 20 hours a week that’s £360 a year in electric, reduce that by 75% for LED and you’ve saved £270, so you just have to price accordingly so you don’t spend more than you save. And 20 hours a week might be a high estimate. The Artistic Licence 4ch is designed just for this, it can go in the consumer unit using some or the existing wiring and they have a nice 4ch DMX wall plate with 4 rotary “dimmers” to go with it. Is the existing system pendant lights or soemtbibg with an ES lamp it doesn’t use Pars or similar?