That’s right! It’s that time of year again. Most people are looking forward to holidays but for hospitality it’s the white heat (literally with the weather) part of the year as Christmas Parties unfold and venues get ready for New Years Eve / Day.

We’re madly installing venues and upgrading others in readiness for the crowds.

We hope you all have a safe Holiday Season and we look forward to seeing you on the other side!

It’s funny what they leave out of some manuals.

In this case we looked at a DVR which the client couldn’t find the NTSC / PAL option in the system menu.

The reason for this is simple – it isn’t in the menus.

The selection is done on the mainboard in the rear left corner (when viewed from the front) and is marked – you’ll need to bring your own jumper though!

Ever since Ness updated their site from ness.com.au to nesscorporation.com we’ve not been able to find the latest version of the NessComms software for talking to their panels.

Get it here :

http://www.nesscorporation.com/Software/nesscomms5.6.0.0.exe

However before you complain to me that the download doesn’t work you need to be registered to use their site!

We’ve decided to add a new “tips” section to the site.

We come across some little gems every now and then that need to shine!

This magic little gem sits in the old Perth Technical College (how appropriate for us!) in the Brookfield Plaza.

A combination of limited floor space and our spelunking skills saw us mount subwoofers centrally beneath the floor or built-in to the lounges for maximum effect and zero visual impact.

Weatherproof speakers in the plaza courtyard (concealed beneath the walkway overhang) gently float music to patrons seated outside and passersby alike while 4 point coverage in each room means people can easily talk over the even background music coverage.

Crown D-Class amplifiers have again been used for ultra-high efficiency / power with very little heat. Commercial WiFi repeaters have been added to the building to give mobile device control of the sound system (and Internet) from anywhere in the building.

A great team to work with!

Out the front on William street Northbridge is burger joint Flipside (the best gluten free burger we’ve seen to date!) and out the back (upstairs via the rear laneway) is the very cool Mechanics Institute.

A great sounding installation with concealed / built-in weatherproof subwoofers, 4 point sound inside, evenly spaced top boxes on the overhead pergola and of course full wireless zone control from mobile devices.

Come check it out (and have a drink at the same time!)

The new VIP Lounge at Ginger needed a subtle highlight so we fitted the front edge with a concealed LED strip to complement the existing LED panelling.

One of our long term client projects has seen us do extensive work in the areas of gas measurement and process control.

Sadly the details are confidential at this point but needless to say it’s been an amazing amount of design, prototyping of parts, assembly (electronic and gas parts), custom coding for web server back ends and more.

Once the system is live we will provide a link here so you can see (most) of what we’ve been helping develop.

A client recently needed to do a semi-permanent projection project.

So we fabricated a custom waterproof enclosure (pictured is our second prototype) featuring forced cooling, added an Arduino controller to automatically start the projector at (timed) power up, fitted it with anti-theft mechanisms and installed a media player inside the building to drive the system.

Recent baking / pouring weather made setting up a little awkward but the system is up and running.

Head towards the light…

Our recent Tweets regarding our “TV-B-On” project has generated quite a lot of interest.

In short we are plagued by systems with “soft-on” buttons – i.e. when you power the device up (from the wall switch) it simply enters standby mode.

To solve this we used an Arduino to export the Infra Red codes of the required equipment’s remotes and then create a unit (in this case a 16MHz / 5v Arduino Micro) to play back the codes when powered up. We’ve also got a version with a RTC (Real Time Clock) to do timed starts / stops. At this stage the Arduino is probably overkill so we’re looking to produce an ATtiny version at some point down the road.