gmbartlett
New member
It has been a while since I provided an update, and for that I apologize. When I started the latest round of updates back in January I took too large of a bite out of the proverbial elephant. I almost choked. It has been a lot more work than I originally anticipated, but isn’t it always. I got a little burned out for a while but I’m back at it. That is enough moaning, now to the update.
About two weeks ago I was checking the status of all of the parts and discovered that it appears that the VS1002 MP3 player that I’ve been using from SparkFun is no longer available. This caused a little bit of panic. But I looked at some of the other players they have and discovered that the VS1053 version has the exact same pin out and header spacing as the VS1002 I’ve been using. Unfortunately it is $5.00 more. I ordered one and it arrived this past Saturday. It requires a slightly different setup routine but it works great.
One of the side benefits has been that it has forced me to look at my MP3 object and make it more efficient. Since the VS1053 chip is much more powerful than the VS1002 I decided to try playing an MP3 encoded at 320kbps. It still wouldn’t play correctly. I looked at the code I was using and at the datasheet for the player and discovered I could greatly increase the speed of the transfer of the data bytes. I was able to increase the speed by a factor of almost 5. Unfortunately this still didn’t help. Tonight I doubled the buffer size from 1024 bytes to 2048 bytes and this seems to work. It still has an occasional glitch but it plays the 320kbps song very nicely. I tested my new MP3 object with my VS1002 board and it too plays the song although not as nicely. I’m not sure how this new MP3 object will work with the sequencing routine but I hope it won’t cause too many problems. I will still probably use 128kbps encoded songs for my display.
I’m also working to update the MP3 object to automatically detect which MP3 chip is installed and to use the correct setup routine. This will allow me to keep to my goal of only having one version of the firmware for everyone.
I have completed the updates to the Helix Network Supervisor. I’m now working to make sure the changes I made still synch with the changes I made to the Helix Firmware. I’ve been able to do initial tests with the new scheduling capability. This will allow you to have up to a total of nine different playlists and shows for each day of the week. The firmware successfully finds the current day’s schedule and then parses it to find the current event it should be working on. What I still need to test is the transition between days and from Saturday to Sunday. These will take some creative testing that I just haven’t had the time for yet.
I’ve also been testing the new playlist capability. The playlist capability allows you to play songs between shows. There can be up to 99 songs in each playlist. So far I haven’t run into any issues with the playlists.
My next plan is to test the show capability of the Helix. I don’t anticipate having many problems with this since it is virtually identical to the original code. The big unknown is the new MP3 object. I will try to get to this testing this weekend.
After that I will start testing the DMX and Renard drivers. RPM has provided a couple of DMX SSR boards for my testing (thank you very much Robert). I have a Renard 8SS that I need to find the time and energy to solder up.
Hopefully these tests will go smoothly and I’ll be ready to release the boards. I still need to update the assembly manual and test routines. I would give a time frame for this but I haven’t made any of my previous deadlines so I’ll just promise to keep working on it. I hope everyone’s patience hasn’t been worn out.
About two weeks ago I was checking the status of all of the parts and discovered that it appears that the VS1002 MP3 player that I’ve been using from SparkFun is no longer available. This caused a little bit of panic. But I looked at some of the other players they have and discovered that the VS1053 version has the exact same pin out and header spacing as the VS1002 I’ve been using. Unfortunately it is $5.00 more. I ordered one and it arrived this past Saturday. It requires a slightly different setup routine but it works great.
One of the side benefits has been that it has forced me to look at my MP3 object and make it more efficient. Since the VS1053 chip is much more powerful than the VS1002 I decided to try playing an MP3 encoded at 320kbps. It still wouldn’t play correctly. I looked at the code I was using and at the datasheet for the player and discovered I could greatly increase the speed of the transfer of the data bytes. I was able to increase the speed by a factor of almost 5. Unfortunately this still didn’t help. Tonight I doubled the buffer size from 1024 bytes to 2048 bytes and this seems to work. It still has an occasional glitch but it plays the 320kbps song very nicely. I tested my new MP3 object with my VS1002 board and it too plays the song although not as nicely. I’m not sure how this new MP3 object will work with the sequencing routine but I hope it won’t cause too many problems. I will still probably use 128kbps encoded songs for my display.
I’m also working to update the MP3 object to automatically detect which MP3 chip is installed and to use the correct setup routine. This will allow me to keep to my goal of only having one version of the firmware for everyone.
I have completed the updates to the Helix Network Supervisor. I’m now working to make sure the changes I made still synch with the changes I made to the Helix Firmware. I’ve been able to do initial tests with the new scheduling capability. This will allow you to have up to a total of nine different playlists and shows for each day of the week. The firmware successfully finds the current day’s schedule and then parses it to find the current event it should be working on. What I still need to test is the transition between days and from Saturday to Sunday. These will take some creative testing that I just haven’t had the time for yet.
I’ve also been testing the new playlist capability. The playlist capability allows you to play songs between shows. There can be up to 99 songs in each playlist. So far I haven’t run into any issues with the playlists.
My next plan is to test the show capability of the Helix. I don’t anticipate having many problems with this since it is virtually identical to the original code. The big unknown is the new MP3 object. I will try to get to this testing this weekend.
After that I will start testing the DMX and Renard drivers. RPM has provided a couple of DMX SSR boards for my testing (thank you very much Robert). I have a Renard 8SS that I need to find the time and energy to solder up.
Hopefully these tests will go smoothly and I’ll be ready to release the boards. I still need to update the assembly manual and test routines. I would give a time frame for this but I haven’t made any of my previous deadlines so I’ll just promise to keep working on it. I hope everyone’s patience hasn’t been worn out.
