Our customers sometimes ask us what we recommend for a basic tool kit. We think about it, and then try to remember everything, and then recite a list off the top of our heads, which isn’t the best way to do it. So we decided to put our tool kits together, take some pictures and tell you a little about what we like. Because we like tools.

We’re starting today with Gareth’s setup. He describes this as the kit he would put together if he needed to work on either control or machinery, but didn’t know exactly what.

He’s got a great selection here. On the control side, he’s got the Fluke 117 multimeter, which has 2 nice features: The screen is backlit, so it’s great in a dark theater, and it also has an ammeter, for checking current. Also check out his probe assortment- they don’t take up a lot of room and they improve the quality of his life.

He also carries a full soldering kit with a mini Pana-Vise clamp. He’s tried to get by with the smaller (and cheaper) standalone irons, but when it comes to soldering encoder wires, a full setup is the way to go. It’s heavier, but Gareth decided over the years that the extra weight was worth it.

He’s got a couple of custom items, too. There’s a brake testing light, a couple of limit jumpers, a 24volt wall adapter for bypassing the Showstopper and even an Ethernet crossover adapter. With these, he can reduce the control down to the minimum to help troubleshoot.

In the lower right is a Gareth classic- the pipe-style vise grips. The ends work like regular grips and he can also grab pipe or (when it comes to that) machine shaft.

The orange bit case has a right angle driver with ratcheting 1/4″ & 5/16″ sockets so you can use with screw & allen bits or chuck up 1/4″ drive sockets. That little driver is a life saver when working in cramped machines where the last set screw is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Then there’s the usual assortment of wrenches, pliers, nippers, nut drivers, allen keys, and a flashlight.

Rounding out the kit is the red bin, which he keeps stocked with small mechanical parts like master links and keys.

That’s Gareth’s kit. But we want to know about what you guys keep around. Is there a special tool you can’t live without? We want to hear from you, and we want to see your setups. Take a picture, tell us what you got and email it to me at ian@creativeconners.com. If we get anything good, we’ll post it here. And who doesn’t like to look at tools?

This week we shipped a custom winch for Daedalus Design and Production for use in the new tour of Einstein On The Beach. The frame measures just 16” x 20” x 10” high and weighs only 80 lbs., which puts it well below our Pushstick winch. It was a fun project and it was nice to have a machine in the shop that one person could carry around!

This winch was designed with a yo-yo style drum, with the cable wrapping on top of itself (like a yo-yo) as opposed to the standard winch drum style where each wrap lays in it’s own groove. We chose the yo-yo style because the effect didn’t require much travel and a yo-yo drum can be made out of waterjet-cut parts and assembled in-house. The winch is required to move a 2000 lb. wagon along a track at a very slow speed, so we chose a 1 HP motor with a 50:1 gearbox.

Daedalus also asked us to build a double-scissor lift platform that got us back into the hydraulics swing. And as we’ve been discovering almost everyday for the last 4 months, having a full-sized shop and some extra people makes a big difference.

A common question we get here at Creative Conners is how to build a multi-step cue. We will look at two possible scenarios and explain how to achieve the effect using Spikemark.

The first scenario: A turntable rotates slowly at one speed and then at a certain point,  without stopping, the speed changes and the turntable continues at the new speed until the cue ends. This is actually pretty simple to pull off. The trick is to write two cues that overlap, and when the second cue starts, it will smoothly take control of the turntable. Let’s take it step by step. Cue #1 rotates the turntable at 1 revolution per minute with a target of 720 degrees. The second cue rotates the turntable at 2 revolutions per minute and also has a target of 720 degrees. Cue #2 is linked to Cue #1 with a position trigger, so that when the turntable hits 360 degrees Cue #2 will start. When cue #1 runs, as soon as the turntable hits 360 degrees cue #2 takes over, speeds up the revolve, and completes the cue. Cue #1 never completes since it is superseded by cue #2, but that’s OK, Spikemark simply moves on to the next cue.

Our second scenario: A wagon tracks upstage towards a wall and when it gets near the wall, the wall bi-parts, allowing the wagon to travel through. The problem with this scenario is that you don’t want the wagon to crash into the wall panels, and you don’t want the walls to open until absolutely necessary so that the movement looks slick. The solution here is three cues. Cue #1 has a target that stops the wagon before it gets to the wall (in case the wall does not open). Cue #2  opens the wall, and can be driven with a position link to of cue #1. Cue #3 moves the wagon through the wall and can be triggered with a position link that references the wall opening once the gap is wide enough for the wagon to get through. The trick is that cue #3 is triggered from cue #2 before cue #1 finishes, so it looks like the wagon has one fluid motion towards it’s upstage target.  If something goes wrong, and the walls don’t open, the trigger point for cue #3 is never reached and cue #1 stops the wagon short of a collision.  Pretty neat, right?

By the way, multi-speed cueing is explained in the Spikemark manual on Page 103. That chapter has a lot of info about complex cue creation and I urge everyone to check it out.

As promised, the new Overview Video is now up on YouTube and on the website. You can see it here.

This video is a quick and easy way to see what the Creative Conners automation system is all about. We show what components make up the system, how easy it is to hook up and what cue creation looks like.

So if you’re telling your friends how great the CCI gear is, tell them about the video and they can see for themselves!

North Carolina Trip Approaching

As I mentioned last week, Jack Miller from University of North Carolina School of the Arts was kind enough to invite Creative Conners down to the Professional Development Workshop to demonstrate our system as part of the Stage Automation class. The workshop is two days of training that takes place in Winston-Salem prior to the USITT conference that’s happening later in the week in Charlotte.

School of the Arts own one of our systems already, so the plan was to just show up and demo our SpikeMark software and Stagehand control using their equipment. However, it turns out that I am going to meet with some other companies after the workshop and need a way to demo the system in a hotel room/lobby setting. As you can imagine, lugging 5HP winches around isn’t ideal for this scenario. In the shop, we have a bunch of little 2-axis rigs that have miniature motors but full Stagehand-OEM control boards. We use these as testing units to test new software features and simulate larger shows on a workbench. If a theater encountered a bug, or anomaly while running a show, we like to load their show file and recreate the environment using these miniature motors for simulation and the log files as a guide. Since these test units are compact and powered from 110vac, I figured taking one of them with me to North Carolina would both allow for a little more gear to play with during the PDW workshop, and let me to show off the software and control during a hotel lobby sales pitch. So we spent a little time this week tidying up one of the test units to be presentable and getting it fitted into a Pelican case for air travel.

Web Site Status Report

Ian has been working hard on the next version of the Creative Conners web site. There is no visual difference to the new site (yet), but he’s been making good progress in retooling the backend to make it easier to add our full catalog of products to the site and move it one step closer for online ordering. Why is this so important? Well, it turns out that we sell a lot of products, like over 100 different products. But, if you looked at our site you might think that we sell maybe a dozen. Our price sheet for 2011 lists everything, but that’s hardly an effective marketing tool. With the new site, there will be almost no friction for us to add all of our products, and any new products, to the online catalog. Ian’s pushing to get the first iteration public by March 18th which is an ambitious goal. Like all “simple” software projects, it’s grown a little more complicated since we started in January

The other pain point of the site that we are working on is developing more learning tools. The first step is to get a little more explanation on the site about how you can make scenery move. Basic explanations of winch tracks and turntables with clear diagrams and helpful tips would do a lot to ease anxiety for TD’s facing their first automation project on a tight timeline. Catherine, the technical writer who revised the SpikeMark manual, is turning her keen eye toward this challenge and I can’t wait to see how it develops. Her initial sketches and outlines look great!

I’ve been pitching in on the coding for the site whenever possible. Writing code is one of my favorite things to do, though finding useful blocks of concentrated time can be challenging. For any other fellow geeks out there that are interested, the new site is being built with ASP.Net MVC. We use Microsoft’s .Net framework for developing SpikeMark as well, so it’s convenient to keep using some of the same tools for web development. Some of our other internal tools have been written Ruby on Rails, but I’ve personally grown a little less excited about both Rails and Ruby. I imagine at this point in the post, my last reader has fallen asleep so I’ll stop waxing poetic about programming languages and platforms.

Have a great week!

A question that comes up frequently is, “How can I pull a piece of scenery with multiple motors and make sure that they are synchronized?”

It’s a great question.  A common scenario is a full-stage (or mostly full-stage) wagon that needs to track upstage/downstage.  Driving large turntables with multiple motors is another instance where you may want to use multiple motors to act as a single motor.  Using multiple motors in either situation lets you distribute your horsepower more evenly across the load.  Could you do it mechanically?  Sure, but using a piece of cable is a lot easier than building a bunch of mechanical linkages.

The answer is simple.  As long as you are using a variable frequency drive with AC motors, just two-fer the motor into the drive.  A couple of points to be aware of:

1.  You are still limited to the total horsepower of the drive.  A 5HP freq drive will only push 5HP worth of motors (maybe 2 @ 2HP).

2.  You should protect each motor individually from overload current.  If you have two 2HP motors powered by a single 5HP inverter, there’s the chance that one motor will draw 5HP worth of current.  Using a motor starter in series with each motor, that is appropriately rated, will protect each motor from overload.  Though I confess, I have be known to skip this step on quick-hit shows, YMMV.

3.  While you two-fer the motor and brake lines, you still only use one set of limit switches and one encoder.

Pretty quiet week here at Creative Conners.  A few bids went out, but nothing shipping.  We spent our free time continuing to build up stock in order to hit our 2nd quarter goal of next-day shipping on all control products and working on the next version of the Creative Conners site.

In addition to building stock and working on the web site, I’m starting to prepare for my trip to North Carolina.  While we won’t be an exhibitor at the USITT Expo this year, I will be demonstrating our system at a pre-conference class hosted by North Carolina School of the Arts.  The class will take place on March 8th and will run 45 minutes, just enough time to show how to setup a motor and write some cues.  I’ll be bringing swag with me for anyone who attends

There’s a couple of pieces of gear that I take with me to almost any shop or show.  The tools I carry range from mechanical to electrical to networking, but each gizmo helps when setting up or troubleshooting automated scenery.  It dawned on me that perhaps I should share the list.  If you have a favorite widget that helps when working with our automation gear (or any automation gear), add a comment so I can add it to my toolbag.

Super Looper Crossover Adapter

This is a great little gadget that can turn any regular network cable into a crossover cable.  Why is that cool?  Well, a normal cable can only be used to connect a device to a switch, so to connect a SpikeMark laptop to a Stagehand you need to have 2 cables and 1 network switch.  With the SuperLooper, you can connect directly from a laptop to a Stagehand without a switch.  I used to purchase special crossover cables to do the same thing, but now I just carry a SuperLooper in my bag.

Encoder Display

Sometimes I just need to test an encoder to make sure I solder the encoder correctly, or my cabling is good, or that my encoder is functioning.  In those situations, setting up a Stagehand and firing up a laptop with SpikeMark to read encoder position feels cumbersome.  This Encoder Display is a great little device for less than $150 that will just count and display encoder pulses.  It’s made by the good folks at US Digital, who make a wide range of excellent encoder products.  If you get one, make sure you order it with differential inputs.

Pocket-sized Wifi Access Point

Stagehands and SpikeMark communicate over plain-old Ethernet which means that you can use a WiFi gizmo to cut the cord between the computer and the Stagehand.  The Asus WL-330gE is a fantastic little WiFi device.  It can act as a router, access point, repeater, or wifi adapter.  That means you can use to free your laptop from the wired network, or using 2 devices you can replace any chunk of cable connecting a Stagehand to the network switch.  We use the WL-330gE in both scenarios.

Sometimes it’s great to be able to wander around the stage with a TabletPC running motors, and sometimes the show needs a wireless wagon with a Stagehand onboard and you have to transmit control signals from the wired network out to the wagon.  For ~$40, this device hard to beat.  As you can see in the photo, it’s roughly the size of an Altoids tin so you can throw a couple in your bag without any trouble.

Brake Circuit Tester

Even simple tools can be useful.  If you suspect that a brake isn’t releasing on a winch, it could be that the brake is having trouble, or that the Stagehand isn’t powering the brake.  This is a 240VAC neon indicator wired into a brake plug to make a dead-simple brake-circuit tester.

Encoder Crossover

Which way did we rig that winch…?  I’m a simple-minded guy, and rarely can I effectively think about two things at once.  I hate having to think about encoder polarity wihle rigging a winch.  Undoubtedly, I’ll get done stringing all the wire rope, run the motor and then discover that FWD on the motor is moving the scenery in the wrong direction.  Flipping motor direction is pretty easy, but then you have to flip the encoder wiring to match.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to break out the soldering iron during load-in.  Instead, we make these 12” jumpers that flip the encoder wiring around to reverse the encoder counting direction.  You can also use these do-hickeys to make an encoder polarity match a motor (of course, if that encoder and motor are going to spend a lifetime together I’d probably bust out the solder).

Motor Crossover

Alright, I kind of lied in the description of the Encoder Crossover above, I don’t really even like to muck around with motor polarity that much.  So we make 12” jumpers that flip motor polarity too.  When used with the Encoder Crossover, this jumper can make a motor reverse direction and maintain the correct encoder counting behavior.

Limit Jumper

Need to bypass a limit switch?  Who doesn’t!  This is a ML1 limit plug with the pins shorted together using a 4” piece of wire inside the connector body.  Terribly simple, but truly effective.  I have a couple stashed in each tool bag.

E-Stop Jumper

Need to bypass the e-stop?  Why!?! Oh, alright, sometimes there’s good reason.  This is a 24vdc wall wart with a 5-pin XLR connector soldered onto the end.  Plug it into the wall, and plug it into the Stagehand and magically the e-stop is released on that Stagehand.

Chain Breaker

Last, but not least, the lowly chain breaker.  I really love this style of breaker, it clamps down on the entire chain link and pushes the pin out.  Other chain breakers only grab one cheek plate on the chain which often results in a slightly mangled chain link and a half-stuck pin.  This style requires a 1/2” wrench, but it works beautifully every time.  McMaster #6669K11 & #6669K12 for small & large chain respectively.

That’s it for my list, what have I missed that you can’t live with out?

(p.s. for the products listed on this page that we make, I haven’t posted links ‘cause…er… we don’t have them listed on our site.  If you want something right now, give me a poke, but we’ll be getting them up on the new site soon)

Spring is teasing us with a preview this week.  The weather in beautiful Barrington RI has been warm and sunny, can’t wait for the “real” Spring to arrive.

Building and shipping

We sent out:  the rest of the Stagehand motor controllers for an 8-axis rental package to Savannah College of Art and Design, a little rental to Purdue University, and finished the orders for both UConn and the Long Wharf Theatre.

Testing for LaJolla

LaJolla Playhouse is a long-time customer, and they were reporting trouble with a few of Stagehands not tracking encoder position properly.  On Tuesday, we received 3 Stagehand OEM Boards to examine and stress test.  One of the boards had a blown encoder chip and would not register any encoder counts at all.  The other two boards showed no signs of trouble.  After replacing the single blown encoder chip, all 3 units were tested for 48 hours of constant cycle-testing and performed without a hitch.  While it was good to find a fault with one unit, it’s not so great to be unable to reproduce any fault in the other 2.  That means that if problems persist when these circuit boards are put back into service on stage that the troubleshooting will have delve deeper in environmental issues like grounding, electrical interference, etc.  Ugh!  Those problems are pretty rare, but can be a real pain to hunt down.

New Video from Geffen Playhouse

Matthew Carleton and the gang at the Geffen Playhouse took advantage of our $250-discount-promo by sending in a video of their automation in action on stage.  There’s a turntable and several traveler panels all moving in slick, coordinated motion.  After a quick edit, I posted it on our YouTube channel, but you can see it here too:

More Revolver Rentals

Cushing Academy in Massachusetts is renting a Revolver for a turntable in their upcoming show, so Friday was spent prepping one of the newly-returned rental Revolvers to go back out.  I’m not sure if our lower rental prices are directly responsible, but I am happy to see that we are keeping our rental inventory out on the road almost all the time now.  We’ll see if the trend continues, but so far I feel very encouraged!

Have a great week!

Great week here at the shop, busy pushing a lot of gear through the pipeline.

McGuire Scenic wraps up another car show

The good folks at McGuire Scenic finished another successful car show this week using a combination of rented Stagehand control and turntable machinery that was built in-house by the scene shop.  If my counting is accurate, I think that makes 3 events in two months with similar gear.  Those guys must be doing a great job!

Savannah College of Art and Design

We shipped the first installment of an 8-axis rental package to the Savannah College of Art and Design.  The gear isn’t due on-site until the 18th of Feb, but we had a couple of units sitting around the shop and so I wanted to get them to the school a little early.  It’s the first rental for the SCAD, and they will be integrating some of their own machinery with our Stagehand control so hopefully a few extra days will give them a little more time to sort out any integration issues and insure smooth load-in.  I believe that they are building a bunch of roll drops for a new production, and can’t wait to see some clips of the scene changes.

Skunkworks project

Even though the week was filled with production work, both for existing orders and to fill the stock inventory, I couldn’t help my mind from wandering about a new accessory that we really really need to make.  We’ve got a box of prototype parts sitting on the shelf now for a Creative Conners Ethernet switch that I think will be a great addition to many shows.  Nothing earth-shattering, but a lot of nice touches to make network connectivity a little more bullet-proof backstage.  More on that when I get some time to play with the hardware in the coming weeks….

Have a great week!