Mini-Oramics in my studio shortly after final assembly:
Once it was all finally assembled and connected I had to test and calibrate the unit.
It was pretty nerve racking, and even though I had tested all the circuits individually, it started out not working at all. As I was adjusting/calibrating all the graphic input comparators - which initially detect the pen strokes, it seemed as though there was a lot of interference. As I adjusted one input (of 72 in total) another one would go out of adjustment and 'detect' nothing at all. It was incredibly frustrating. It was very late at night by this point and also I had been accepted to demonstrate the unit at the Seeing Sound Conference only about a week later so I had a very tight deadline. I had also scheduled for some composers to come in and start using it in the Goldsmiths Electronic Music Studios the very next week. I had to give up and go home and sleep off the disappointment. Luckily however, the morning I had a slight hunch as to what might be causing the problem. It turned out the interference was optical rather than electronic, and I just had to move the IR LEDs closer to the sensors. It then started to function as intended. By the end of that day after some further adjustments, I managed to post this slightly amateurish demo video:
MINI-ORAMICS WORKING! from Tom Richards on Vimeo.
Once it was all finally assembled and connected I had to test and calibrate the unit.
It was pretty nerve racking, and even though I had tested all the circuits individually, it started out not working at all. As I was adjusting/calibrating all the graphic input comparators - which initially detect the pen strokes, it seemed as though there was a lot of interference. As I adjusted one input (of 72 in total) another one would go out of adjustment and 'detect' nothing at all. It was incredibly frustrating. It was very late at night by this point and also I had been accepted to demonstrate the unit at the Seeing Sound Conference only about a week later so I had a very tight deadline. I had also scheduled for some composers to come in and start using it in the Goldsmiths Electronic Music Studios the very next week. I had to give up and go home and sleep off the disappointment. Luckily however, the morning I had a slight hunch as to what might be causing the problem. It turned out the interference was optical rather than electronic, and I just had to move the IR LEDs closer to the sensors. It then started to function as intended. By the end of that day after some further adjustments, I managed to post this slightly amateurish demo video:
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