Thread: Another VSA automation idea

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I started to develop an application for myself, when I though some people here may be interested.

VSA appears to be lacking a 'playlist' feature. So I'm developing a small tool that will automate VSA routines. The best way to describe it is to think of your music player... iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player. You can create a playlist of MP3s. My applications lets you save, load, play, loop a collections of VSA routines. Allowing you to automate an entire evenings performance. There are also some other cool tweaks that I'm including that I found very useful.

Does this sound useful? If so, I can clean it up for public use. It does require purchasing VSA Console, but after speaking with someone at Brookshire software, we may be able to get a group discount.

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Just so everyone knows... I've have decided to stop public production of this software. Not because I feel bad for Skulltronix, Phoenix or Jerry.. I think it's going to be too much to publicly support it. I will however finish my current tasks and provide it exclusively to people here that may want it.

Thanks for the support everyone!!!


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UPDATE
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First off, I want to say thanks to everyone who has PM'd me with their support. (and NO, I wasn't threatened by Phoenix or anyone else at Skulltronix). This was purely my decision. I came to the conclusion with work, graduate school, a new house, props to build, etc... that it would not be fair to customers (and I wouldn't feel right about it) to sell a product that I could not dedicate to support.

On that note, I am not throwing away this project either... I am going to finish up and attempt to bullet proof it as much as possible. If you are interested in obtaining a copy, let me know. You will need to acquire 'VSA Console' yourself, but that's only $16.

I would love to know how to do these kind of things...I have been reading everything I could find on this subject but am still really in the dark and just don't know where to start.

Originally Posted by nOrTHeRn TouCh

I would love to know how to do these kind of things...I have been reading everything I could find on this subject but am still really in the dark and just don't know where to start.

Do you mean the automation part or using VSA?

Viper,

Those sound like excellent features. I'll take it.

absolutely!

I've got 2 songs programed out so far and I've been trying to figure out how to get them to play together.

I did a similar thing with my fortune teller except that the playlist was random and each was initiated by a coin drop. I have plans this year to create a RAM drive and copy the whole "Playlist" to the ram drive so that each routine and wav file loads faster. I think this adds some great functionality to VSA as the only two things I think are missing (besides good documentation) is a front-end that can play a series of scripts and triggered input (which I also solved cheaply). I say go for it. Everyone will benefit and you could would have to be cleaner than mine.

Originally Posted by MiniGuy

I did a similar thing with my fortune teller except that the playlist was random

That would be a nice feature. A random playlist.

Great.. I can easily add a randomize feature.

When I hear back from Brookshire, I will start looking for some testers.

I have a question:
Would you mind an approx 3-10 second delay between routines? Or would you like to see a faster transistion? VSA has some limitations but I have a few ideas on how to avoid this delay.

What are you writing in? I chose VB since it was quick, easy, and served my needs for both launching VSAConcole and for reading the triggered inputs. I can send you some snippets of code I used if you like. As I mentioned it is not clean as I wrote it very quickly in the few minutes I had left before Halloween. Then when it worked flawlessly for 300+ fortunes on Halloween, I just never changed it. Now I am planning to clean it up before 2008 Halloween, but have not had the chance. Anyway, if its of any use to you, I will send it out.

MiniGuy: I actually already have majority of it done. Just cleaning it up now and adding features. I'm sure you've heard the term... If it ain't broken, it doesn't have enough features.

What are you using for your input? I was thinking about including this, but just haven't had a chance to search for a cheap triggering solution. I have some things at work, but they would not be cheap enough and a major overkill.