Busy busy busy, always busy. Heres another attempt to keep this blog current and up to date. Where I left off I was at Stage one working on the 3D camera bridle system, which is working well, Karl has made some very clever smoothing algorithms so you can drive the bridle around on a joystick, record your movements and then play it back smoothed out, i am well impressed each time we test it.
So, it was a thursday eve, and I was traveling down to Milton Keynes to do some media server programming for a a company called LED flex, who were intern installing an LED sculpture in the lobby of a new building for Catapult Transport Systems. Over 2 days I programmed up a media server to play back programmed states which ran colour chases and rolling hues along the 20feet led strip. It was still a building site whilst i was there so i never actually saw it finished but it did look quite neat even amongst the carnage of building stuff. I left them which a Touch OSC app which allowed them to chose one of 15 different animations/states and the ability to do manual colour sweeps from an iPad. I hadn’t used TouchOSC for quite a while and had forgotten how quick and easy it is to setup program and use, perfect for this.
From milton keynes i traveled south and stopped in StAlbans for a couple of nights to visit friends in and around london. It was a great weekend catching up with people and being based in StAlbans it was dead easy to commute on the train, the last thing i wanted to do was take the hire car i had in to the centre of London!
On the Monday (Bank Holiday) I travelled north again and went to see my parents, they had been on holiday to Benidorm and i hadn’t seen them for a few weeks before that, it was nice to see them and I think the holiday done then good as they were really chipper! Whilst i was there a book i had ordered had arrived Vast click on the link for a fill decryption but i can only describe it as interesting peculiar and nice to look at.
After a top weekend i was back at the hangar in weather by, more bridle stuff, i had been designing the playback/control console as well and was nearing the final production build. Heres an image of the almost complete (graphics missing) console next to an earlier agricultural prototype. We had the console chassis 3D printed on one of the new printers at the hangar, version 1 was a bit flimsy but second time round with some mods, adding spines and doing a thicker print it was really quite neat. This is just my opinion but 3D printing still has a long way to go, prints still need finishing as even on a fine thread the finish is still rough. Its still a great technology and I’m excited to see how it will progress.
Whilst at the hangar i decided to take apart my GrandMA2 wing just to see what was inside. Its an incredibly neat construction, 2 4layer PCB’s holding cherryBlack key switches for the buttons. Also each key is individually dimmable via serial with a Texas Instrument LED driver IC. Theres allot of thought and design has gone into it and i was really quite impressed!
That weekend i was back in newcastle and had forgotten i had agreed to do a couple of days etching at Dance City for my mate James. It was for a Spanish company called Alacaldanza doing a kids show and actually it was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of days, proper nice company.
I also got the chance to properly package my projectors into their custom cases. I bought a pair of Optoma EH501 at the end of may then got round to getting some custom cut foam in Peli cases for them. Not only is it protective but it looks pretty cool as-well olive green was definitely the right colour.
In July I’m off to Berlin for a holiday but I’m also doing a German language course which should be fn but I also imagine quite intense. Five hours a day each week day, then the evenings and weekends relax or go out to a club. Coincidentally* a few days after booking my berlin trip I got a phone call to do a little job out in Berlin which fits in nicely. I can’t really say much about it at the moment but it tie mean that we had to go out there for a day to meet the clients and do a little site recce. After leaving the airport and gong on the S-Bahn, we finally got on the U-Banh at Boddinstrase and i remember last time i used this stop it was winter and about -14 Degress C, this time was much warmer!
Heres a face I saw in the toilets at the airport, i wasn’t sure about getting my phoe out in the toilets to take a picture but then i thought, aaahh, fuck it…