[sdiy] VCA controls

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow Again.
At 12:28 AM 5/11/02 -0400, you wrote:
>Hmmm...
>
>Red
>Green
>'yellow'
>off
>Flashing Red
>Flashing Green
>Flashing 'yellow'
>
>and FLASHING OFF....
>
>yep... that's eight states all rightey   ;^P

Anyway, LEDs are for wimps. Use light bulbs. Much brighter, much more 
impressive. You can speed up the response of a lamp if you pre-heat it 
first. That is, drive a small amount of current into it at all times, then 
the filament is already warm and doesn't have to heat up so much to come up 
to full brightness as it would from cold.

I have a MIDI switcher I built which uses this principal to achieve a large 
bright custom display of active MIDI signals. Since the MIDI signals have 
to be lengthened through a one-shot anyway, so that you can actually see 
them, A lamp in this case is entirely plausible.

It also helps a video or cine camera to see them even in a relatively 
bright environment. Anyone who saw the photos of my workshop and studio 
which I put on my web site recently would have some idea what I mean.

And if you really wanna make your panel look like it's off the set of some 
sci-fi movie, use a small floro lamp behind a custom cut-out in the panel. 
With annotations such as. "Alien defence grid ON" and "Ion cannon charged." 
Or even "Primary bullshit detector in scan mode"

You don't need to put lamps on a panel to make it look like there's more to 
it. The Japs do this kind of thing with a few unnecessary plastic mouldings 
all the time. You don't even need to use plastic. Get some balsa wood and 
carve it into some ominous looking strips. Paint it with metal paint and 
give it the same finish as the rest of the panel then glue them on. 
Guaranteed to make your VCA look like it also houses a small nuclear 
reactor. Or you can tell people you're using alien analogue technology.

But before you ask. Yes that really is a fully functioning MWOWM computer 
in those photos. People may think it's a mock up but I can assure you it's 
real. I'm the only person outside of Dobbstown to have ever understood this 
alien computer technology. A back up for x-day. You wouldn't belive how 
hard it is to get hold of Xist components. It's not like you can mail order 
them from planet X or anything. Fortunately I made a number of close 
friends in the alien community when I offered my ass up for anal probing. 
But that's another story.

When you do a little 3D modeling you realize pretty quickly how bland 
everything looks without a little texture. Simply milling some 
crentillations in your panel will make it look more impressive. And the 
more pseudo functional it looks the better. Look at all those gawdy plastic 
home stereos the Japs put out. Ok they look crap to us because we're more 
Bauhaus types who can see the function in the form and these things have no 
function. But if you take a picture of one I'm sure they look pretty 
impressive. I think the Japs have over stepped the line somewhere and not 
just because they're all plastic pieces of crap rated in PMPO @ 3 million 
watts per channel but weigh less than a carton of eggs. But somewhere in 
there lies a good design principal. And if you can make your panel 
ornamentation look like it's actually helping the user identify the knob 
they're after in a dark room then you've done a good job.

But of course, if you can't do any of that, there's always bullshit.

Hope this helps.

Be absolutely Icebox.

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