Hi.

Well, I got a surprise this morning. Yes, the samples arrived, a week before the week after the month later than the two weeks they quoted me originally. It even seems to be the same size as the mechanical drawings claim (always a pleasant shock), and actually fits the box. Barely.

That's the good news.

Yesterday evening I had an email from the distributor, about the availability of the module I now have a sample of. They had finally extracted delivery times from Microtune in Germany, which turn out to be 4 months!

That's the bad news.

However, they say that the weather band version is available from stock, and have offered me quite a good price on it. I'll have to double check the software compatibility, but It may well be a viable alternative.

And that's the ugly news.

I will now throw the session open to questions from the floor.

What, no secret messages sandwiched between the layers?

It's only a double sided board, hence between layers is a little difficult to achieve. However, by careful use of fractal track patterns, I have managed to impose a message on the 11-dimensional N-space contained within the volume of the PCB. Reading it is your problem...

If he's blind, does it really matter that much how many eyes he has?

Of course! Otherwise he wouldn't have anywhere to keep his marble.

Do you have dimensions for the box? I'm cramped for space inside my home enclosure, but there's a space of about 8x6x8cm if I can move leads out of the way. Otherwise I'll have to mount it externally or swap with the one in the car.

The box is externally 82mm x 80mm x 55mm.

If space is an issue, can they be mounted side-by-side (in a different enclosure, obviously)? Or are there connectors which depend on the alignment?

The PCBs will connect together via a pin header. This could be replaced with a flat cable if necessary.

Is it possible to distinguish the new tuners from the original, in software? I'd like to be sure that any software that uses your new features won't break a standard tuner (and vice-versa). You said earlier that you were reducing the tuner ID to two bits; does this mean that the other two bits on a standard tuner will appear as inputs?

From the point of view of the player, the tuners will be completely interchangeable. The two vs four bits of ID merely means that my tuner can only have one of 4 different ID's, rather than 16.

Is it possible to extend the connector on the tuner so that I can mount it elsewhere?

As the player and antenna inputs will be on flying leads anyway, you can always just make them the length you require (within reason, 10m is probably a bit much) at the time of construction.

Improper use of the subjunctive case.

As always, a bad idea. Always use the subjunctive case for storing subjunctives ONLY, or your warranty will be void.

Patrick

Thats great news! But... I can't solder! Is anyone in the UK willing to make the kits for us folk with useless hands? (for a fee of course) I'm in the UK by the way.

That'd be right Murray, two people able to give something back to the empeg community just down the road from each other but miles from anybody else. Oh well .... my offer still stands.

And Patrick : If you think that's ugly news, then I think we're in pretty good shape.

Hi.

If you (or anybody else) don't mind the extra shipping cost to/from Germany (which shouldn't be too high anyway), I am perfectly willing to handle the soldering for you.
For reference: If the tuner module does not exceed the weight of 2kilogram (which it would hardly do), shipment from Germany to any place in the EU is about 8 EUR (worldwide: 10EUR) without insurance and 15EUR (world: 33EUR max.) with insurance. EU in this case includes the non-EU countries of Switzerland, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

cu,
sven

Edit: Corrected the max weight for a tuner ;-)

Sven, I think you got a kilo to much in there. Or the german post office is far more generous on the weight limits than the swedish...

/Michael

I'm fairly handy with an iron so I suppose I could offer my services, suppose I should probably build myself one first though. BTW I'm based in Manchester...

You are right. I corrected it now.

I would also be happy to assemble a limited number of kits for other UK owners.

Thanks. At least I know its possible to get them assembled! Now we all just need to wait!

... They had finally extracted delivery times from Microtune in Germany, which turn out to be 4 months! However, they say that the weather band version is available from stock, and have offered me quite a good price on it. Which is probably why my original tuner module also has a weather band version of the tuner module in it. If I remember rightly Hugo said they got the weather band modules for the same price as the normal ones because there weren't enough normal ones available (mind you, I've got a bad memory ). I'll have to double check the software compatibility, but It may well be a viable alternative. Like I said, my original empeg/Rio/SonicBLUE whatever tuner module has a weather band version of the tuner module in it and it works fine, so I don't think software compatibility is going to be a problem. Good to hear that you finally managed to get your samples and that things are moving forward

Make that three people in Australia willing to build kits. Not just down the road from you but still miles from anybody else!

Just proves that us Aussies are better at more than just cricket and rugby, eh?

So why did you wait for a Brit to design this kit then?

Rob

If you'll remember I did start looking into the possibility of a limited production run a while back. It also helps when you have access to a complete working design.

Gees and you guys still can't beat Sweden at football. Last time was 1968 if I remember correctly (and I wasn't even born then)

Ah. but Patrick didn't design the original tuner! His kit design is original.

As for the football, I take it that's a world cup reference, but since I don't plan to watch a single match of it I would have to say that I'm less than devastated. Those guys should get useful jobs

Rob

I am guessing he had access to the schematics though right? Or did he reverse engineer an original and did he just guess how the PIC was wired.

If he designed it from scratch and is writing the PIC code etc himself then good work. Otherwise (and I'm pretty sure it is), I think he had a fairly decent head start. Laying out boards is easy (well at least less time consuming) compared to designing a new product from scratch.

And it was a World Cup reference - although England haven't beaten Sweden for 34 odd years WC or otherwise. Rob, are you the only person in England who doesn't care about the football?

Rob, are you the only person in England who doesn't care about the football? Maybe, but not the only one in Europe!

I don't think I know anyone who's into football.. ok, thinking harder I can come up with two people who are. I know quite a lot of people though!

Rob

Yep i think football is really overhyped, i loveed ITV digital going belly up due to football.

I am starting to wish i was on a ship so i can miss all the bloody football.

Be careful what you wish for.

10 more days till shoreside

Nope, I put my hand up and say I couldn't care less about the world cup. Even though I have been working my ass off the last couple of weeks to make sure people who watch the world cup on the BBC have access to all those useless interactive features!

Yep i think football is really overhyped

<american_comment>I don't know about football, but soccer is WAY overhyped...</american_comment>

Maybe Patrick could get a bulk deal by flying us over to England to solder them up for him?

<REAL American Comment> They play soccer past High School level?....</REAL American Comment>

I must be one of the only guys in the US that watches Soccer on Univision, and I don't speak a lick of spanish. 'Course playing fo 16 years may have influenced my opinion a bit. GoooooOOOOOoooool!

Univision and Fox Sports World are my two favorite channels...soccer plays on my TV all the time.

I must be one of the only guys in the US that watches Soccer on Univision, and I don't speak a lick of spanish. 'Course playing fo 16 years may have influenced my opinion a bit. GoooooOOOOOoooool!

I think the hot females that grace the airwaves of Univision are enough to make me not mind the few times they decide show a friggin' soccer game.

More on topic, (well, more related to this off-topic tangent) soccer is definitely a sport that you don't tend to appreciate unless you've played it. I think it's a great sport to play, and I played for several years, but I myself have a tough time appreciating it from a spectator's point of view. I actually *can* watch an indoor soccer game, because there's more action and more scoring.

Here in the U.S. we have a professional indoor soccer league, and the games are much more fast-paced than the world's version of soccer. I think the smaller field, less-confusing rules, and the fact that there are NO TIES make the game much more palatable to American fans. There is NOTHING worse than watching two teams play to a 0-0 or 1-1 tie, regardless of how much suspense, action, whatever there was. A tie is simply an unsatisfying result to a game. I cannot believe soccer hasn't adopted an overtime / shootout system to settle ties. I understand that it sucks to lose a game on shootouts, but it's real nice to win one! How can you celebrate a friggin' tie?!?

Anyway. I know soccer is the world's game and being an American I'll never understand these things. And having seen a few NFL Europe games on TV, it's clear that the rest of the world won't understand American football either. Good thing it's our differences that make us stronger!

There is NOTHING worse than watching two teams play to a 0-0 or 1-1 tie, regardless of how much suspense, action, whatever there was. A tie is simply an unsatisfying result to a game. I cannot believe soccer hasn't adopted an overtime / shootout system to settle ties. I understand that it sucks to lose a game on shootouts, but it's real nice to win one!

Speak fer yourself. I don't mind a tie at all. Watching soccer is like watching an exciting chess match for me. Hmm... maybe that's a bad example... A tie is a bit of an unsatisfying result, but I'd rather a tied game between two equal teams than see a game won or lost on a shootout. It doesn't just suck to lose on a shootout, it sucks to win on one, too. I played as a keeper for about 5 years. A shootout in soccer isn't like a shootout in hockey, where the goalie covers 90% of the net. As a keeper, you pick which direction you're going to dive before the kicker even swings a leg at the ball -- it's the only chance you have of stopping a shot. Provided you picked the right direction in the first place. You might as well count potatoes to decide the winner, and everyone playing knows it, so winning by shootout has no more satisfaction to a game than a tie. And for what it's worth, they do have a shootout in the final rounds -- the prelims are for points for seeding purposes, just like first round games in hockey tourneys that allow tie games (such as the Olympics).

An overtime period would be nice, but that would make for some *really* long games. Maybe if overtime games were played with half the men on the field, and unlimited subs to keep players fresh enough to keep playing well...

(To bring the subject fully back on topic, I'm glad I work for a company that has engineers -- I couldn't solder my way out of a dry paper bag )

Cheers,

I love soccer!! Right now I'm watching Japan v Belgium, and is the best game I've seen so far! In my opinion its better than American Football - it goes on for hours, and theres 2 minutes of play!! Overhyped nonsense. I do like to watch a bit of baseball though, but American football you can keep.

Yeah trying to drag it back on track Maplins in the Uk has soldering kits and projects to build could anyone have a looky and reccomend one to play with before we build our tuner kits.