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BlueClone - The Blue Room's Own Comms System


Brian

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VOLUNTEERS WANTED

 

Anyone interested in helping John and I get this finished?

 

What would be great would be some volunteers to take the parts list and each add one column to it containing a specific supplier's part numbers.

 

I'll post an excel spreadsheet here later tomorrow and if a few people could spend a couple of hours going through it and adding part numbers for the following suppliers it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Farnell

CPC

RS

Rapid

Maplin

 

We're quite keen to make this as universally available as possible hence the inclusion of Maplin.

 

And if there's any other online suppliers you think we ought to include then post here.

 

I'll look after merging them back in so if volunteers could each say which supplier they'll do.

 

We're looking at using the cheapest generic components we can find. The parts list ought to have enough info in it to identify what we need.

 

Thanks.

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I don't have access to a Tecpro or Stonewood base station/power supply, so can those in the know tell me if they have a male & female pair for each circuit or two males. I haven't looked at one for quite a while and can't remember.
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The original PS-2 3-channel unit was 3 males.

The Eurolite single channel unit was a male and a female.

The Eurolite two channel rack mounted unit was two males and a female per channel

The Tecpro 711 3-channel unit is 3 males

The Tecpro 754 two-channel unit is a male and a female per channel.

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Oh I'm so thrilled I've found this website and project! I'm looking for DIY com system for doing live video registrations. At the moment we have to rent the whole setup and the com system is useally the part that's not offered by many suppliers. Limitting our options. It's for charity so the budget is thight.

 

We like to build a base station (for 2 headsets) and 4 beltpacks.

 

I've read the whole topic so I know it's a bit too late for design suggestions ;-) For video the ability to add a tally signal (An extra light that can be mounted on the camera that indicates if it's on air or not) would be very nice. Most video switchers have output for this.

 

I'd like to hear your ideas for such an option. If I have to add/hack/change stuff later, after I made the com system, that's fine. Just like to see if it's possible.

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re: Tally Signals

 

The problem would be that you need individual tallies for each camera so you know which camera is live. This means that, as a comms system is wired point-to-point and uses just a 3-core mic cable, there aren't enough wires running about the place to do this.

 

You could do a hack where you had multiple boards inside a box as your master station with separate cables out to each camera. Your tally feeds from the mixer, which are normally isolated relay outputs, would then wire across the call light button. This means you'd lose the ability to flash a call light on the beltpacks.

 

The other option would be to do something similar to the above but run individual 2-pair cables, maybe star quad, out to each camera, and use the 2nd pair to feed a tally light. The cable from the comms system would terminate in a 5-pin XLR mounted on the tally light which also has a 3-pin xlr output to feed the beltpack. This means that the comms side would be a standard system, all you'd need is an add-on tally interface and camera tally lights.

 

Excuse the quick drawing (done in papercad)...

 

post-207-0-16037800-1380798196_thumb.jpg

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Any chance of a corresponding schematic drawing to go with the published parts list?

 

Thanks

 

Peter

 

Your wish is my command. I can't add attachments to this thread so they are elsewhere, but follow the links below.

 

Schematic

 

Component Placement

 

The component placement is 2X actual size for easy measurement. C1, C2 & C18 are 0.2" pitch all other ceramic caps are 0.1" pitch.

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What is the function of the L1,C10 tuned circuit?

I could see it if C10 ran from the junction with the diodes to ground forming an RFI filter, but a parallel tuned circuit there makes little sense that I can see.

 

Just curious.

 

Regards, Dan.

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re: Tally Signals

 

The problem would be that you need individual tallies for each camera so you know which camera is live. This means that, as a comms system is wired point-to-point and uses just a 3-core mic cable, there aren't enough wires running about the place to do this.

 

You could do a hack where you had multiple boards inside a box as your master station with separate cables out to each camera. Your tally feeds from the mixer, which are normally isolated relay outputs, would then wire across the call light button. This means you'd lose the ability to flash a call light on the beltpacks.

 

The other option would be to do something similar to the above but run individual 2-pair cables, maybe star quad, out to each camera, and use the 2nd pair to feed a tally light. The cable from the comms system would terminate in a 5-pin XLR mounted on the tally light which also has a 3-pin XLR output to feed the beltpack. This means that the comms side would be a standard system, all you'd need is an add-on tally interface and camera tally lights.

 

Excuse the quick drawing (done in papercad)...

 

post-207-0-16037800-1380798196_thumb.jpg

 

 

Hi, I like your suggestion, It loses the daisy chain in favor of id's for the beltpacks. This makes it even possible to add this on a later point in time without realy changing the beltpacks.

I was thinking more like modulating another signal on top of the audio and make each beltpack 'tune in' to that signal. This keeps the daisy chain and the ability to use normal cables. It is a lott harder to implement, but it could be another fun project.

I haven't studied the schematic yet to see if it is possible. What the min-frequency should be with respect to the low-pass for the audio and what the max-frequency could be due to other system limitations. After that, I can work out how good the filters and so should be and so on.

 

For now I'm realy interested in the intercom. Maybe tomorrow I can help with some part research.

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I was thinking more like modulating another signal on top of the audio and make each beltpack 'tune in' to that signal. This keeps the daisy chain and the ability to use normal cables. It is a lott harder to implement, but it could be another fun project.

I haven't studied the schematic yet to see if it is possible. What the min-frequency should be with respect to the low-pass for the audio and what the max-frequency could be due to other system limitations. After that, I can work out how good the filters and so should be and so on.

 

More subtle, but tune that parallel LC on the power input to 455KHz and do the tally signallying by coupling a pulse coded 455KHz onto the power line.

 

Good ceramic filters are readily available for this frequency (Used in AM radios) and the detector is straightforward, then stuff the resulting bitstream into a small pic as a uart and decode which tally should be on.

 

The tally controller could actually sit in line with a completely unmodified beltpack, line comes in, control carrier is sampled, line goes out to the pack with power via an LC lowpass to not pass the tally control carrier. This actually sounds fairly straightforward to implement, 1200 baud should suffice so nothing very sophisticated is required.

 

Regards, Dan.

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