My Thread

by **Marbles_00** on Wed Sep 27, 2006 4:12 pm

Yeah, she started Junior Kindergarden. When I went...it was just Kindergarden....now they have Junior and Senior.

Gees I just remember drawing, story telling and playing. Now they are learning to write, read, even how to use computers...before long, she will be the next xlobby expert (if I have anything to do with it)

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by **P3rv3rt B3ar** on Wed Sep 27, 2006 4:16 pm

Marbles_00 wrote:she will be the next xlobby expert (if I have anything to do with it) .

Sounds like some happy boy in the future dont have to worry about WAF... so unfair!

by **bmblank** on Wed Sep 27, 2006 7:34 pm

So instead of complaining about things being too complicated in the world of HTPCs she'll be complaining that it doesn't have all the cool stuff she wants in it. Women... Can't live with em, can't live without em....

by **P3rv3rt B3ar** on Thu Sep 28, 2006 5:07 pm

Haha, thats so true!

Great news guys... i got results about removed lumpy today... they were negative, so im gonna be around pestering u guys with stupid questions also in future.

Also got x10 kit today... and i ve been playing with lights... on.. off... on..off.. dimmer... brighter.. dim... bright

yeah its really cool sh!t!! only thing im disapointed i cant get appliance module to work with coffee maker

Also recruited SAPI to xlobby trough girder last night... that too is working surprisingly well...

Needles to say not much progress with xPerT, im having very low motivation with it cause of all the bugs...

by **P3rv3rt B3ar** on Sun Oct 01, 2006 9:30 pm

How is it hanging guys?

Today i put bt dongle to htpc and used it together with bt-hf to control xlobby, lighting, amp and so on trough girder with speech wirelesly anywhere at close proximity of theatre... is god damn cool... but yeah geek factor is dangerously high though...

tomorrow ill be putting up some colored spotlights controllable by x10 ofcourse, to give some color to grayness of silver screen...

by **P3rv3rt B3ar** on Tue Oct 03, 2006 6:25 pm

Just to clear up confusion: me as in "my thread" means you, me, and anybody who prowls on these forums... this is not supposed to be bears monologue

Anyways i had some non-htpc duties to take care of so it took until today i had change to try to put spotlights in place... and i cant believe it turned out to be harder than i ever expected... now i know that there is some professional pride to be "lighting technician"

So anybody has some experience about spots on big screen? cause what i did looks totally lousy. I use yellow and blue light... now yellow is so bright it will cancel the blue out... and what is worse, u can actually see hearth of the lamp in reflection, while it should be smooth... on the other hand blue is otherwise good but its goddamn dim, i think it needs more wattage. veeery frustrating...

by **P3rv3rt B3ar** on Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:59 pm

Any PSU experts here? Im thinking my HTPC may have too low rated power source... Its just its rated over 400W, and i dont have monster display adapter so i thought that should be very well adequite.

On the otherhand i have plugged in about ten usb devices, theres 4 hard disks so i dont know... well problem im having this "Power surge on USB port"-notifier keeps popping in windows allthough beyond anoyance i havent noticed it having any effects on system... im little puzzled what this means. Could it be because of power source? and if it is so, do i need to get power source with just bigger rated wattage, or should i mainly pay attention on amperage on certain rail?

by **bmblank** on Fri Oct 06, 2006 3:18 pm

Looks like your'e out of luck.

by **Marbles_00** on Fri Oct 06, 2006 4:46 pm

Since the USB uses 5V, you should be concerned as to how much current each drive is taking up, how much current on the 5V line is being used for every other 5V device in the system, add up all those currents and find out if the 400W supply can handle the current draw on the 5V line. I think, though, you will find that the 5V output of the supply can put out a good amount of current.

The other thing you may have to watch out for is if the 5V is getting "conditioned" by a USB microcontroller, you may be stessing the controller with all those peripherals connected to it. In that case you should find out what the controller is and look up its datasheet.

Hope this helps.

by **P3rv3rt B3ar** on Wed Oct 11, 2006 6:13 pm

Huge thanx for advices Marbles, Popped into comp shop and picked up today new PSU while driving home from lect. This one is rated over 500W and serves 35 Amperes on 5V rail. Hopefully it helps, its just damn rack wont allow me to "hot swap" it... have to unplug all those damn cords from htpc... oh boy this is gonna be project for whole week!!

Well if this doesnt help i proceed to wonder what that microcontroller stuff means :oops:

by **Marbles_00** on Wed Oct 11, 2006 7:49 pm

Basically a USB controller translates commands from/to the CPU to/from the USB device. I know, there is more to it (drivers and such), but I just wanted to give as simple an explanation as possible. Some USB devices have onboard regulators/conditioners that can be utilized for driving circuits.

An example:
Where I work, we've used an C80551F320 USB controller (datasheet if you care is here by Silicon Laboratories). It has an onboard 5V to 3.3V regulator that is capable of supplying around 300mA of current. Well...we've "popped" a few of them.

I'm not a motherboard expert, but USB has its Data +/- lines, ground, and 5V...where is the 5V coming from, the power supply direct, or through some other means. If coming from some other means, you will have to find out what its limits are. In this case, a beefed up supply will not help you.

Hope this was helpful.

by **P3rv3rt B3ar** on Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:28 am

Ok as my HTPC is making gradual transformation from test system to system in use, one anomaly is starting to get more and more on my nervs.

I have this horizontal line in picture which looks like other half it belong to different frame than the other, so basicly if theres not lot of activity in picture u barely notice it, but as soon as picture comes more dynamic (Action scene) line gets really anoying. Theres always just one line in pic, but height on which it appears varies... allthough during same video, line appears to stay pretty fixed on same height. Notice it appears in all video material so changes that it would be caused by specific dshow filter are veeeery thin. i also have tried to change screen refresh rate to multiple of framerate of video material, with no perceptable help. Im not expert on video, so i would really approciate any pointers of possible cause of this kind of artifact.

by **bmblank** on Wed Oct 18, 2006 7:03 pm

I REALLY do not want to be at work right now.. 2.5 more hours until I'm on my way home and then on my way to photograph a rally race in the keeweenaw.
[plug:shameless]
Check out http://www.darkponyproductions.com for more

[/plug]

by **P3rv3rt B3ar** on Wed Oct 25, 2006 9:34 am

Oh man u gotta dream job... combining videos and racing two of my favorites.

As title tells my goddamn USB problems have just escalated... it seems extra power solved "power surge" issue... but i started to experience much more grave problem... windows started to loose my logitech desktop!

I bet, M$ people fückd up something, cause it used to work fine... and still does on bios until i see damn windows logo on boot-up. my setup is rather complicated out of HTPC's arse there 30ft amplified run to aten usb-switch out of the switch is powered usb-hub which connects to all (shared) periphelia including logitech wireless desktop.

All other periphelia except desktop are working fine... also desktop works fine with other hosts (including both windows and linux)... Logitech states that allthough their products might work in setups like mine, they support only solutions when their sh!t is directly connected to computer... aargh im pulling my hairs out with this... i dont know about u guys, but i still kind of need keyboard and mouse on htpc too, if for nothing else atleast for configuring system...

Im thinking mayby to get logitech dinovo for dedicated use with htpc, so i wouldnt need 10 meter USB run anymore, but has somebody experience about using bluetooth and older logitech blackbox radio technology in same space, do they both work without interfering each other?

All this problems have kept me away from creative htpc work for a while... have been developing spot lights for screen instead... allthough wattage is little too small i think they turned otherwise nice, little tacky or discotheque but i like them... have to take some pics sometimes...

by **bmblank** on Wed Oct 25, 2006 12:18 pm

I wish videoing were my job. That was just for the weekend. Even though videoing the race kinda sucks cause you don't have much time actually WATCH the race. It's worth it at the end though when you have a dvd in your hand.
The job that I get paid to do is engineering.

And just keep this in mind... Don't make something you're passionate about into a job... Work will ruin it for you.

My Thread

US fücking B