Spaghetti Dead

ElektroFreak said:

EDIT: No need for more negativity. Suffice it to say that LPF has, throughout all adversity, continued it's legacy of experimentation, education and innovation, even to the benefit of it's detractors. I think that's pretty sweet!

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Excellent point.!.!
+rep

Sound Card Dacs ARE obsolete within 2 months.

A team of people who are members of BOTH LPF and PL have developed a alternative. No more C-media drivers, and PCBs are available. 100% of it is public domain already, for NON-COMMERCIAL use.

Comes with a API, so no hidden programming issues.

I had a great deal to do with the public sound card dac development. It has been pushed far beyond its intended application, running well outside of the Win 2K/XP pro OS it was coded for. I am not sad to see it go, in the least.
C-Media would never let us have the driver code so we could adapt it. They would let us have all the chips we wanted, but not the code. I suspect they hired a third party, and did NOT have the code themselves. Such is life.

Sound Card Dacing's actual inventor, for the commercial version, which was out before the public version, does not get credit for it.

Now for the bad news. CG is POed enough he has left the market. Right when a good low cost playback device is becoming available, the lowest cost decent code has left the market. I don't blame him, software support is pure hell.

Mike has moved on to other things, so LFI-Player support is dwindling. The code is still open source, but I am not aware that anybody has ever volunteered to recode it for modern windows platforms. Mike was always unhappy that very few LFI-Player users ever bothered to call or email him with either praise or bugs, after the first year or two it was out. When someone (we know whom) posted a comment of "This sucks monkeyballs" on the download site, he nearly pulled it. The "Monkey" comment was posted because Mike did not want to recode and recompile it so it would run on a rare platform for that one person. Mike is not thin skinned, in the least. However seeing that as the #1 comment on a national ratings site, annoyed him, as he is a highly skilled professional programmer.

He spent YEARS of spare time on that code, and a few more thank-yous might have improved it. He is not worried in the least for his effort being lost, it got him a job at a major company that made him very happy. They agreed to allow it to be released when LFI changed its business model, and Mike left. It had another name long before it was LFI-Player. It was actually a commercial product for LFI and had a bit different user interface in that role. It has been used in high end fixed installs and on professional band tours that would shock you. Those operators, of course, had time to learn it.

It still has features most of you have not found, because you need to look at it as a Win 3.11 program , not a XP program. I am amazed there are not freeware scripts floating around for its timed show engine, but few people drill down to that level. There actually is another freeware program out there that writes LFI-Player show scripts for you.

That leaves LSX and some specialized game freeware to support the new hardware. As the German laser show community is very tight knit, and has high standards for entry, they use HE as a platform to sell a few commercial cards, I doubt they will be thrilled to see a low cost/open source card out there. SO HE support is doubtful.

Its plug and go, I have my hands on one Beta unit, and so do many others. They were being handed out at construction cost at a recent conference, and drew good reviews.

Perhaps if some of you could help Dr Lava find a professional distribution system, he could get the bugs out of the LSX sales/support chain. He does have a very demanding daytime career. The DR in Dr Lava is because he has just earned a PhD. That takes 5 more years of school, on top of a four year degree. You would be amazed if you ever got to see the state of the art hardware he builds for his work.

Pangolin will of course never support open hardware. Their security systems are embedded in their platforms.

One last thing, reputations matter to professionals, and when they share something with a community, and it starts to reflect in a negative manner, they will leave.

Steve

LSRFAQ said:

Now for the bad news. CG is POed enough he has left the market. Right when a good low cost playback device is becoming available, the lowest cost decent code has left the market. I don't blame him, software support is pure hell.

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Expect to see my own software that will be better/as good as Spaghetti around the same time of the DAC, maybe sooner, maybe longer. :beer:

Edit: Freeware, not Software.
Edit: In two months I expect to have playback for ILDA files and Spaghetti shows, possibly a couple games built in.

ARGLaser said:

Expect to see my own software that will be better/as good as Spaghetti around the same time of the DAC, maybe sooner, maybe longer. :beer:

Edit: Freeware, not Software.
Edit: In two months I expect to have playback for ILDA files and Spaghetti shows, possibly a couple games built in.

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Buy the Ibuprofen or Tylenol for the support now. I'm not kidding. Spaghetti took about two years to code. Simple frame dumping is one thing. Show editors with a multi-track timeline and 1/30th of a second precision timing, are another.

Steve

ARGLaser said:

Expect to see my own software that will be better/as good as Spaghetti around the same time of the DAC, maybe sooner, maybe longer. :beer:

Edit: Freeware, not Software.
Edit: In two months I expect to have playback for ILDA files and Spaghetti shows, possibly a couple games built in.

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Wouldn't it make more sense to recode LFI for a modern platform rather than just start from scratch? Its open-source and a really good starting point.

Well, now "Gary" is earning zero for his software, rather than $100 a license + some folk who might pirate it but he is under no obligation to support. Sounds like a rather stupid choice to me, but whatever.

whatsupadrian said:

Wouldn't it make more sense to recode LFI for a modern platform rather than just start from scratch? Its open-source and a really good starting point.

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That's what i'm planning to do, but it's written in C++ and i'm more familiar with C#

Spaghetti isn't dead. It's explained in the other thread.

LSRFAQ is right. It took me less than a week to come up with something that would send ILDA files to a DAC. Adding support for multiple projectors, multiple layers, DMX devices, TTL devices, multiple DAC drivers, reverse engineering iShow, DirectX display modules, obfuscation, licensing, website, forums, time for answer questions, update mechanisms, installers, making tshirts for SELEM, dealing with people that want to build sound card DACs but don't know how to solder, R&D and skunkwork implementation on things like WMP visualizations, vision processing, drawing programs, Wet Noodles, BPM detection and other things that have been worked on but not yet released took a little more time.

carmangary said:

Spaghetti isn't dead. It's explained in the other thread.

LSRFAQ is right. It took me less than a week to come up with something that would send ILDA files to a DAC. Adding support for multiple projectors, multiple layers, DMX devices, TTL devices, multiple DAC drivers, reverse engineering iShow, DirectX display modules, obfuscation, licensing, website, forums, time for answer questions, update mechanisms, installers, making tshirts for SELEM, dealing with people that want to build sound card DACs but don't know how to solder, R&D and skunkwork implementation on things like WMP visualizations, vision processing, drawing programs, Wet Noodles, BPM detection and other things that have been worked on but not yet released took a little more time.

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I agree thanks and gratitude are deserved for your hard work programming spaghetti. Should just finalize it and keep it for what it was intended for, simple drag and drop timeline show editor. Price it accordingly, all of your other feats sounds like a full featured laser program with a much steeper price tag.

That full featured program could still have its place, without having to support the sound card DAC. Tie it to the Arduino DAC Board, Im sure it would be easy to tie the software to the PIC chips when they are developed, maybe the software should be offered for free just like Pangolin and just sell the hardware.

IMO as it currently stands you are responsible for creating updates for spaghetti until the bugs are worked out and it runs stable without crashing. I can almost guarantee a crash within 1hour of use. Impossible for me to test if its my laptop because I can only install the software and use it on that machine.

I have two copies of it installed on TWO different machines and it crashes all the time. That is one of the main reasons why I finally upgraded to Pangolin QuickShow 2. No time for crashes when I am doing a live show in front of hundreds of people!

whatsupadrian said:

IMO as it currently stands you are responsible for creating updates for spaghetti until the bugs are worked out and it runs stable without crashing. I can almost guarantee a crash within 1hour of use. Impossible for me to test if its my laptop because I can only install the software and use it on that machine.

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I can't remember the last time someone submitted a bug report. I can't fix what I don't know about. It works fine for me. It was used at SELEM and I didn't see any crashing shows. I'm sure there are some bugs that exist but I don't encounter them so they don't get fixed. I blame myself for any bugs that exist and will glad fix them and provide updates when I do. But, if you don't report them and just complain about them then you're not doing anything to help.

We appreciate all your hard work but at some point your updates would not run on my computers. I remember you going through everything with you to try and get it to work to no avail. Thanks for trying though! The last version that I am able to successfully use is the Spaghetti_2.0.0.0-Beta5R which is about 9 months old and crashes occaisionally.

paulzimm said:

We appreciate all your hard work but at some point your updates would not run on my computers. I remember you going through everything with you to try and get it to work to no avail. Thanks for trying though! The last version that I am able to successfully use is the Spaghetti_2.0.0.0-Beta5R which is about 9 months old and crashes occaisionally.

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2.0.0.0 B5 is over a year old and a test version so I don't doubt that it crashed a lot. I'm sure I could figure out why it doesn't work on your computer but I don't remember any of the details.

LSRFAQ said:

One last thing, reputations matter to professionals!
Steve

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Lol.. you sure got that right!

I've never had issue with the good that folks do for our community, and Gary has done a lot in that regard. However, CHARACTER matters a great deal also, a point which you conspicuously avoided mentioning while you were listing all the reason these people should be lauded. Remember, personal accomplishments are not necessarily a license to do whatever you want, mistreat your customers however and whenever you want, or leverage your personal expectations and requirements on the community as a whole. While your and others efforts are appreciated, there have been many, many issues with character in the time I've been around. Far too many. People who lack good character and/or ethics negate their accomplishments through their negative influence elsewhere.

Have there ever been any issues with your character EF?

*rolls eyes*

The fact that I speak my mind does not show anything about my personal character or ethical conduct. There HAS never been an issue with my character, and I would challenge you to prove otherwise. Any negative influence I have exhibited has always been towards a specific group. That's because I refuse to do nothing and stand silently while behavior that I know to be wrong goes on. It's that simple. If I have to ruffle a few feathers to call attention to these problems, it's a small price to pay in my opinion.