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of interest…….

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    Insert title here…….

    Its Wednesday the 22nd October and time to update the blog about whats been happening over the past couple of weeks. My time has been quite nicely split across various projects, across various disciplines. So from where i last left off i was back to the hangar at stave one to continue development of a which speed winch 3d control system which StageOne are developing for a client. Karl and myself spent quite a which ironing out various little niggles which always arise when doing a new product. Ive been writing the 3d control software for the user 3d joystick flying and Karl has been doing some rather clever work in handling data transfer for a smooth flight.

    On the weekend, I somehow, and I’m not yet sure how it happened as we are all never in the same place at the same time, but I managed to catch up with my good mates Mitch and BigChris. We went out on the motorbikes around northumberland and i was riding pillion on the back of Chris. I wasn’t expecting him to be accelerating as hard as he did and yes I did shout some profanities the first time he took off and I was confined i was coming off the back. It was a top time catching up!!

    On the sunday i was to travel down to London to do some video programming and playback for a gig for YeastCulture. But before that i had to go through all of my stuff to make sure I had everything and at this point i decided to empty my rucksack as it was big and heavy and i really count remember everything i had in there, this is some of the contents, mainly less 2 laptops and 2 power supplies.

    So, from top left to right reading like a book we have:

    1. 5 Point + H&V Laser, for projection lineups Link
    2. Passport, take it everywhere.
    3. Oyster card, priceless for London.
    4. Coloured pens, everyone likes pens!
    5. Super lightweight packable running jacket.
    6. Red backed Bicycle cards for doing sleight of hand
    7. Matrox Dual head2go, used for this Yeast culture gig.
    8. Leap Motion used for playing and developing softwares.
    9. Pencil case of random adapter cables.
    10. Wera portable screwdriver set, So useful. Link
    11. Korg Kaossilator II for making noises and general entertainmet. Link
    12. Webcam, for debugging & developing softwares.
    13. Gaming mouse, my RAT Link
    14. Some video signal adapters, HDMI/Minidisplayport.
    15. Leatherman Skelltool, Lightweight Multitool Link
    16. CUBE BOT Link
    17. USB Light (Around cube-bot)
    18. Bosch PLR50 Laser Measure Link
    19. LACIE Thndebot SSD external drive FAST!! Link
    20. Led Lenser Headtorch, dimmable & Focusable Link
    21. DVI Parrot used for spoofing EDID signals.
    22. 3D Mouse, i use this with 3d modelling software allot! Link
    23. Pitor, my little blue mascot from Poland when I briefly toured with Jonsi.
    24. BOSE Mini sound link portable speaker, I LOVE this Link
    I eventually repacked my back with all the things I needed, and then packed my suitcase with clothes for the week and by sunday evening i was back down the big smoke again ready for an early start at Rich Mix in Shoreditich to begin rehearsals for the gig “Index of Metals” 

    It was acne easy start tot he day and I met David and Ian from Sound intermedia who were looking after all the live mixing and audio playback, and also Simon who was following the score and cuing the piece. I was there in the roll of video & projection specialist to set up the system, program Qlab and make sure it all worked. We had been given triple screen content prior to the show split across 3 seperate video files so to make things more robust i spent a couple of days rendering out all the clips in to one long wide file which ensured sync across the screens. This was prep well worth doing, allows with rendering out an hours with of timecode which was used on occasions where the conductor needed to keep track where he was in relation tot he score and the time.

    Two days later we were in the queen Elizabeth hall in the South Bank centre. It was a relatively easy morning setting up, apart from one broken VGA cable which took a while to find, and then a successful couple of rehearsals during the afternoon. After rehersalsand before the show I met up with with Nick from Yeast Culture and it was great to catch up over fish and chips! The show went very well and everyone was really happy, a success! It was a really good few days working with some really nice people!

    The following day I was due to travel back north to the hangar at stage one to continue on LED development but received a call off roy asking if i could go and help Ben on a job in Battersea as Jam who was meant to be there and an ear infection and couldn’t make it. So the following day i was with Ben and the rest of the chaps from stage one installing automation for an event for Youtube.

    Everything went in smoothly and ben had a nice view from front of house! The automation consisted of 3 revolves each of them with a double sided led screen on. In sequence and timed with video and performers the screens revolved for presenters and performers to come on and off the stage. Once everything was up and running it all looked really good. I must say that the production company Flourish Creative were incredibly nice people and looked after everyone really well. It was tiring out to be a brilliant week!

    Early monday morning I was on a train up to Yorkshire and then headed to the hangar to catch up with work on the current large LED project.  This stage i was putting together the prototype power data distribution circuit boards, this time we had ordered to prototype PCB in red, mainly for my own amusement. After getting over a couple of silly errors it was all working swimmingly.  Heres a picture of one part of the workshop, I have to apologise for to Jamie as even though i start the day really tidy, by the ned of the day it works out like this. Sorry Jam!

    Later on in the week we were on the disused airfield next to the hangar doing some real word testing on the 3d camera flying system which provided some good feedback. Thankfully for the 3 days it was up the weather was SUNNY!!! Since we have implanted quite a few improvements, and I’m looking forward tot he next test.

    Here are some beautifully machined pieces of aluminium, containing lights, these elite things are really coming together. These will be used on a project going live next year.

    I haven’t really seen may faces recently, this was the latest one, diddy robot head on a hydraulic valve on a scissor lift. Nuurrrrrggg!

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    A fast month: LED optics tests and design in the hangar

    After I left of the last post where I had went for a run around Taunton we had one day left in Karls studio doing some LED development trying out some different optics. We discovered that if we introduced a smoke machine, and put an optic from an LED Lenser P7 over a 120 degree 4 color led you got quite a nice effect. Not the result we were looking for but pretty all the same.

    The following Monday I was back in the hangar working on more led design as the brief had changed and the goalposts moved a little, which, to be honest, is for the better. This did mean back to the drawing board with the physical design and new challenges.
    Boo, Jims dog was back in the hangar after a holiday and was looking healthier after his diet. This did mean that every time you were eating something or even just ventured into the kitchen you got this…..

    After a quick turnaround design process and some lovely CNC machining of a combined heat sink and case we had a foundation for the printed circuit board, before sending off the PCB for manufacture I printed off the circuit to scale just to make sure it would fit.

    On the weekend I was back in Newcastle, and even though the angel of the north has been there since 1998 I have never actually went and visited it. So on the Saturday morning after I had been for a I drive to the site of the angel. Apart from a few picnic tables and some playing fields and of course the sculpture there is not allot there. It is though when you get up close a very impressive structure and generally just a nice place to hang out of you just want to read a book have a picnic or just sit in the sun.

    On Sunday I drove down to Birmingham to do a gig for the DRP group in the Hilton Metropole. It had been years since id been to this venue and when I got there nothing had changed. I didn’t know a whole lot about the gig before I got there apart from there were pair of Panasonic projectors, which needed blending into a single image. We started at 06.00 on the Monday rigging 6 projectors and all the relevant cabling. After some creative projector manipulation we had a basic projection blend setup by the evening. We were projection on to a set, which the content was mapped to, the tricky bit was that all we had was a single HD feed from power-point. Normally you would use some software to output 2 feeds with an overlap to do the blend. On this, from Brads suggestion we used the zoom and HV shift on the projectors themselves to select the part of the image we wanted and then did the blend on the projectors, it actually worked a treat.

    I was looking after video playback on the conference, I haven’t worked a conference for probably 2 years and had forgotten how long some of the speeches can go on for. During this time there is nothing to do apart from wait for your next cue. Its at this point I started doodling, we were doing the conference for the SPAR brand, so I did a Spar doodle!

    On the Wednesday morning I was driving back north to Stage one where work continued on the custom LED. I had built up some prototype units and was trying to get as much brightness out them as possible before they either overheated or drew more current than the circuit could handle.  They are now BRIGHT and so far, after 36hour full whack testing the firmware is bulletproof! More testing to follow!

    I had to recycle some old broken electronics which I found in the workshop to make a power data breakout unit, its amazing what you can do with a Dremmel, some wires and a bit soldering to make life easy!

    That’s a condensed month from my last blog post, its been a fast month too, in-fact its been a fast year! Here’s a face from the Days Inn Weatherby! I can’t believe I haven’t seen this before!

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    Back to work: installing Priscilla in Madrid

    No sooner had I been back from Berlin (11th August) I was off away again to Spain for the install of Priscilla Queen of the desert in a theatre in Madrid. It was all VERY last minute, I hadn’t done the install for 2 years as my good frond Iain had been looking after it so we had literally one day for Iain to pass over all the info form the past 2 installs, lots on memory keys but also sobs very important notes in notepads!

    I don’t actually live anywhere at the moment as I spend most of the time, not quite on the road but in various locations around the UK/Europe so when I’m in Newcastle which I call my base, my best mate James has a spare room for me and i generally buy the beer which works out well. Whilst packing for Madrid, one of James’s cats, Rosie decided to make a nest in my case and took quite a bit of persuading to get out!

    I Landed in Madrid and finally got to the theatre midday on the 13th August and it was nice to see familiar friends whom many I hadn’t seen since Sochi. Most of us had installed this before which was useful because its a bit of a task with so many bits to put together mechanical and electrical.

    Gethyn, Davide, Ian, Simon, Smithy

    For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about there when I say Priscilla here is a basic explanation. Priscilla Queen of the desert the musical is made on the film of the same name about 3 drag queens who drive across Australia to Ayres Rock. Priscilla is the name of the bus they drive around in and for the stage show the bus is an incredibly complex piece of stage equipment. The bus can be remotely driven around the stage in any direction because of the 4 wheels can pivot independently an be turned in any 360 degree direction. Ontop of that the bus has 3 lifts inside which raise performers onto he roof and the entrée side of the bus opens like a massive garage door. Thats the mechanical part and now for the electrical! The bus is clad in 40,000 LED’s which can display low resolution video on all sides along with may theatrical lighting fixtures hidden inside the bus to light the performers when the garage door is open. This was a picture I sent to Iain with his nickname Waldo t let him know how we were getting on.

    The bus is getting pretty old now and electronic spares are hard to come by as most of the components are custom produced, thus manufacturing more is quite expensive and people don’t want to spend the money for an overhaul. So because of this I had a box of electronics which i didn’t know what was working and what wasn’t. Luckily there was only one LED driver card which got damaged in transit so i managed to  put together a new unit from working bits on several different non working bits!

    The bus has done well considering the age of here and that she has done close to 2000 shows  between London, Brazil, Sweden and now Spain. I think the next time it moves to a new place the people with the money are going to have to reach into their pockets for a major electronics and cosmetic overhaul. This was her on day 4 when we had almost everything together and it was just tweaking and tidying after that.

    A day after i got back to the UK I went and helped out Nitelites with some content mapping for Shindig in Hoults yard. Because they were orienting the screens at 45degrees the pixel processor doesn’t allow for this adjustment, so using Mad Mapper and syphon so the VJ could still use his preferred software Resolume i set up the system so the content fitted the screens correctly.

    The following week I was back at the hangar at Stage One and that friday one of my good mates Si Bye was leaving the sweat house for good, this meant one thing, leaving drinks. There wasn’t just a few drinks there were many which almost broke me. This is Simon Me and Bully in the Boot and Shoe at a civilised part of the evening!

    Visiting My parents house the following weekend I was sorting through some stuff which had been at the back of a cupboard and I was quite surprised to find this poster. This was part of a series of gigs that my mate Andy Magee and myself put on in 2002, we did all the promotion and also provided the sound equipment, we were essentially making work for ourselves. It was  great fun and i can’t believe its over 12 years ago now!!

    Currently, August 2014 I’m working on a project for Stage one where we are designing a high power RGBW led pixel to be installed in an architectural structure. Im not sure how much I can say about it apart from that were looking to produce about 3000 high power pixels which will run very low resolution video across,  this was a printout of the PCB design to make sure the components would fit. Once we had the layout correct the designer changed his mind about some visual elements which meant we had to redesign the PCB, turns out that after much head scratching of how we were going to do it, it should be better wight he new layout.

    This week just gone i was down London working on a gig called The Dinnerparty Revisited with Ash Green. I didn’t know much about it until getting down on the sunday evening when Ash talked me through it.Its the brainchild of  Katherine Araniello who is a disabled performance artist. The gig was split across 2 venues each containging 6 tv screens which played back characters at a dinner party prerecorded with Katherine acting in them. When Katherine went over a sensor in her wheelchair at the south bank centre the associated TV at the Purcell rooms, south bank centre and at arts Admin would play the video. Both venues had actresses playing Katherins butler and her personal assistant, and because theres only one Katherin, we had a inflatable effigy with a live feed of Katherines face from the Purcell rooms projected onto it. There was also a live feed of both venues sent to each other and vision mixed onto a big screen upstage. The show was bonkers and as part of the show the actors drank Prosecco as part of the show and gave it out to the audience. In the venue where I was looking after the tech we had Laura and Katie who were superb, incredibly funny and kept the audience when sometimes it was quite difficult to understand because of the inherent delay of video feeds between he venues. It was a crazy bizarre show but everyone seemed happy when they left, i think the champagne helped too 🙂

    Whilst in london I was  staying in a flat in Balfron tower, one of the last bits of undeveloped Poplar. Most of the tenants have been moved out the grade 2 listed building in preparation for it to be developed into expensive flats but currently there is a guardian scene where people can live quite cheaply although they may have to move out within a week or a month’s notice. Theres no real guarantee that you will have somewhere to live for anymore than a week/month thus the low rent. We were the because our producer Andrew Mitchelson has something to do wight he tenanting and we had an amazing view from the 24th floor, top digs!

    On the wednesday I was off straight to Taunton to Karls workshop where we were assembling and testing the first prototype of LED i mentioned earlier. Whilst there i want for a run around Cotford StLuke’s where I was staying, it was quite nice to be in the country direct from busy busy london! I wasn’t sure what do do when crossing the railway line as the sign said don’t, so i did!

    Last of all, a face to finish, this was in the flat at Balfron tower, an old TV ariel socket making a pretty good skeleton face! Booooom!!!

     

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