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Thread: Ether Dream: new Ethernet DAC

  1. #21
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    gashead is offline Admin Verified: Best Accent Ever(Tm)
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    (POE Support)
    Quote Originally Posted by j4cbo View Post
    I considered it. The thing is, although PoE can supply plenty of power for the DAC itself, it really isn't enough to power a whole laser projector. (The lasers, possibly; the galvos, not so much.) So the projector would need its own power feed anyway, and PoE would be a significant amount of added cost and complexity. If there's a really compelling case for it, then maybe in a future revision, but probably not.

    That said, the DAC board is designed to be able to be built right into a projector. It'll run off of anything in the 8v-25v DC range, so you can feed it from the galvo power supply or a convenient +12 rail or whatever, and there's a pin header for the output signals as well as the DB25 connector.
    Yeah, I understand where you're coming from, I initially imagined the DAC external to the projector and in the majority of cases this is what I'd prefer.. hence my POE interest.

    I do however understand and appreciate that the board will become a internal component in most builds - this is also very cool!

    It sounds like the extra work to POE enable the board is just not worth the time, I'm afraid I don't have a compelling argument at this time although I do see it as being an advantage in very large installations - that said at the current price it's definitely more viable to have a DAC inside every projector which is probably the ultimate configuration anyway.

    Sorry - thinking out aloud this morning.

    Cheers,

    Nige.

  2. #22
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    May be there was a link or an information but I did not found it, so my (stupid) question: is there somewhere a manual that describes how to access this card out of own applications?

    Edit: OK, I found it :-)
    Last edited by Elmi; 10-17-2011 at 02:47.

  3. #23
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    And there's now a web site with order form!

    http://ether-dream.com/

  4. #24
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    I see, it all makes sense to me now....

  5. #25
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    in the next production batch will there be also the possibility to buy complete box with casing? or is the "projector-inside" the primary use for this DAC? thanks

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by dzodzo View Post
    in the next production batch will there be also the possibility to buy complete box with casing? or is the "projector-inside" the primary use for this DAC? thanks
    In the future I'll also be making available a kit with a case and power supply for something under $50, but that's taking a back seat to getting the first boards out the door.
    And yeah, the options will be bare-board-only, board-with-case-and-PS, and case/PS upgrade kit.

  7. #27
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    I'll be releasing a new firmware version in a week or so with some new features:

    - ILDA file playback from SD card at up to 50kpps
    - Geometric correction: size-and-scale, or full perspective correction with each corner positionable
    - Color delay correction: R, G, and B can each be independently delayed by up to 15 points
    - ILDA playback and correction parameters can be controlled in two ways:
    - With OSC messages over UDP
    - With a file on the SD card - on power-up, the DAC looks for an "autoplay.txt" file, which can contain commands and settings.

    Existing units can be upgraded to the new firmware over USB.

  8. #28
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    Sweet!

    I just got mine and am itching to finally get a chance to power it up

    How does the input for the geometric correction work? Will you release a setup tool of some sort?

  9. #29
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    I had a chance to power up the dac, but I am having some issues...
    The current setup is a computer with windows XP, connected to the dac via an ethernet cable, the dac is being powered from a 9v supply, and I have the yellow interlock light and green status light (but no emission light), with a scope hooked up looking for output between X+ and X-

    I am using LFI Player version 1.1.6, with the EtherDream.dll from your website renamed to EzAudDac.dll, placed in the LFI player root directory. I also left the old EzAudDac.ini file in there (also tried removing it, didn't seem to make any difference)

    I have configured the ethernet interface on my computer for a static IP of 169.254.1.1 with a netmask of 255.255.0.0, and no default GW, no DNS server

    The first time I started LFI I had the network settings wrong, (so as far as windows was concerned the dac was not connected) and LFI started right up, but I didn't have any output (for obvious reasons). There was a j4DAC.txt created in the root of LFI player, but it was completely empty.

    I fired up wireshark and saw that I had screwed up my network settings, so I fixed them, and tried again. This time I could see the etherdream sending out broadcast packets (about once a second), and a short burst of data when I started LFI (I can provide a cap if it would help you).

    After I got that sorted out, I tried to start LFI, but the main window did not load. I also noticed that the j4cDAC.txt had grown to over 1MB in size, so I opened it to take a look, and found
    [0.000275] == DLL Loaded ==
    [0.000883] Process priority class: 128
    [0.000893] == EzAudDacGetCardNum ==
    [0.000896] Waiting 1100 milliseconds.
    [0.003245] _: listening for DACs...
    [0.604748] _: Found new DAC: 169.254.73.58
    [1.101368] 3d3a48: Calling getaddrinfo: "169.254.73.58", "7765"
    [1.113028] 3d3a48: Connected.
    [1.113077] 3d3a48: Protocol 0 / LE 0 / playback 1 / source 0
    [1.113086] 3d3a48: Flags: LE 0, playback 0, source 0
    [1.113094] 3d3a48: Buffer: 0 points, 0 pps, 0 total played
    [1.113371] 3d3a48: Protocol 0 / LE 0 / playback 1 / source 0
    [1.113381] 3d3a48: Flags: LE 0, playback 0, source 0
    [1.113388] 3d3a48: Buffer: 0 points, 0 pps, 0 total played
    [1.113396] 3d3a48: Sent.
    [1.113549] 3d3a48: Ready.
    [1.113558] Found 1 DACs.
    [1.113705] 3d3a48: SetThreadPriority ret 9857080
    [1.113730] 3d3a48: Timer set to 1ms
    [1.113738] 3d3a48: L: Waiting...
    [1.113784] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.118833] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.124778] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.130636] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.136498] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.142353] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.148214] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.154093] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.159934] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.165795] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.171653] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.177509] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.183376] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.189232] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.195022] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    [1.200950] ffffff: M: GetStatus(1) return -1
    ...
    With the GetStatus line being returned endlessly

    I tried a few more times by using the task manager to kill the LFI player process, and got the same result, although I think that one time I got it to read LE 4/ playback 1 /source 0 once (although I am not exactly sure what the values were).


    Not one to give up easily, I headed over to the source forge, and found the "L: Waiting..." statement in LoopUpdate(), but I can't find the M: GetStatus(1) anywhere, let alone why it might be looping endlessly.


    I am not sure where to go from here, the documentation seems a little sparse in this department. Has anyone got this thing working using the EzAudDac.dll interface with LFI? Or any other free laser software for the matter?


    As one last sanity check I also tried putting the original EzAudDac.dll file back into the LFI root and sure enough I got an output from my computer speakers.

  10. #30
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    Can you try http://ether-dream.com/EtherDream-EzAudDac.dll ?

    The internals of the driver use 0-based indexing for DAC numbers, but I'd forgotten that EzAudDac uses 1-based indexing. This version of the driver fixes that. (I'll unify them at some point - for now, use http://ether-dream.com/EtherDream.dll with LSX, and http://ether-dream.com/EtherDream-EzAudDac.dll with other programs that expect to talk to EzAudDac.dll.)

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