Hi all

Quick question about modding the Galleon mouse unit (I think that's what it's called, don't have it with me).

This runs off 2xAA batteries held in a very flimsy unreliable battery holder inside the case. We're having issues with ours where the batteries loose contact with the terminals every so often and then the PCs all end up 10 minutes out after a week or so!

I was going to mod the unit so I could use an external AC adapter, but then I thought why not just take 5V from the serial port, stick it through an appropriate resistor, and power it from the PC?

Can anyone think of a reason for *not* doing this? I'm sure there must be some obvious reason that I've completely overlooked else the manufacturer would have designed it that way in the first place?!

Thanks

Matt

hi Matt,

I believe that the batteries are actually wired in reverse polarity to the PC becuase the units require both +ve and -ve voltages to operate correctly.

In fact as far as I can remember there isn't actually a voltage source on the serial port - the Radio clock software actually has to hold one logic signal in a particular state (can't remeber which line though!) so the unit can sneakily use a small amount of power from it.

An external AC adaptor would make sense I think as otherwise when you shut the PC down (including a reboot) the clock would reset and can take up to 1 hour to re-lock onto the rugby clock (it only actually locks on at half past the hour)

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Peter Jarrett, Technical Director
Broadcast Radio Ltd.

Bill Bailey: No win, no fee, no basis in reality. Just a room above a minicab office in Acton and a steady stream of greedy simpletons whose delusion is only matched by their clumsiness

Thanks Peter

The reverse polarity thing makes sense.

AC adapter it is!

Cheers

Matt

We have a few analogue clocks around the studio (all Rugby synched) and they all seem to be about half a second ahead of the time on the synched PCs. Our engineer also reckons that the analogue clocks are in synch with the pips on Radio 4 VHF (although in this world of digital distribution I don't know if you can trust that any more).

Are these things only accurate to the nearest second or might we have another problem here? The thing in the systray reckons our signal level is in the green.

Becuase of the way numbers get rounded when they are displayed on screen in Myriad this can sometimes make it look like they are a little fast (though usually not by this much)

Try opening the Windows Clock (double click on it in the system tray) and see if this is showing the time correctly.

Also you could try dialling the speaking clock (123?) to see how accurate radio 4 is :-)

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Peter Jarrett, Technical Director
Broadcast Radio Ltd.

Bill Bailey: No win, no fee, no basis in reality. Just a room above a minicab office in Acton and a steady stream of greedy simpletons whose delusion is only matched by their clumsiness

We had an issue where the analogue clock in the studio was 2 seconds head of Myriad.

Turns out the clock had fallen to bits in the past and the station manager had reassembled it without aligning the second hand properly :roll: :lol:

I never actually compared the time according to Windows with the time according to Myriad; I just assumed they would be the same. Mind you we know what assumption is the mother of.

I didn't even think of checking the speaking clock! Retro. I'll give that a go.

When we first installed Myriad it was out of synch with our analogue clock but I just assumed the analogue clock (which was old) was out. However it's only recently when we purchased another 3 that I began to suspect the time on the PCs.

Incidentally Peter the Myriad clock seems to be a little slow; not fast.

Underneath, Myriad just reads the time from the Windows Clock, and everything internally runs to 1 hundredth of a second accuracy but the routines that update the actual clock display on the window only fire a certain number of times a second.

Just for the sake of conversation, say it fires every 0.3 of a second. It will therefore fire at 0, 0.3, 0.6, 0.9 and again at 1.2 - it doesn't actually fire at 1.0 therefore you don't see the actual moment it rolls over - this is shown at the next update at 1.2

The actual accuracy is much higher, but you see the point. This is why it sometimes seems to be out, even though it is actually spot on.

Therefore checking the windows clock (which updates on different principles) shows a more representative view of the current time.

(Exhale!)

------------
Peter Jarrett, Technical Director
Broadcast Radio Ltd.

Bill Bailey: No win, no fee, no basis in reality. Just a room above a minicab office in Acton and a steady stream of greedy simpletons whose delusion is only matched by their clumsiness

Cheers that makes sense!!

Just as a matter of interest, does the \"hard marker\" code in Q-NXT work to the same granularity or is it more accurate?

The Absolute times work to hundredth of seconds (becuase there is a limitation to the windows timer objects which can be gotten round but would slow the system down!), but the cart timing when using Q-NXT to auto-seg actually work to milliseconds

------------
Peter Jarrett, Technical Director
Broadcast Radio Ltd.

Bill Bailey: No win, no fee, no basis in reality. Just a room above a minicab office in Acton and a steady stream of greedy simpletons whose delusion is only matched by their clumsiness