So it’s been a while since I updated – one of the (several) things I’ve been working on is a remote fader box for ETC’s Emphasis contol system.
It interfaces to Emphasis via the serial port, and allows you to wirelessly control a submaster fader. I’m developing this for Chris Gilbertson of Light by Numbers, a company specialising in film & TV lighting. The idea is that the lighting cameraman can be given basic and simple control of a block of lights to do with as he wishes. Hopefully I’ll get round to publising some photos and maybe some schematics soon.
For the curious, it’s based on a PIC16F877 microcontroller from Microchip, which handles the AtoD conversion and generation of serial control codes. The radio end of things is handled by an Easy-radio module, which – as the name suggests – makes the radio stuff very easy; just give it a TTL level serial input and it handles all the packetising and encoding for you. Another easy-radio module at the other end plus a MAX232 and power supply and voila! A remote fader (if only it were as simple as it sounds…)
