Studio and Stage

This is a warning to everyone in the field of photographic and TV studios. Do not deal with Studio and Stage based in Halifax HX3 6SN. http://studioandstage.co.uk/ The company has changed name to escape the ripped-off customers but it is the same guy behind it each time.

If you have given them money then expect poor quality or unmerchantable rubbish. Don't expect a refund.

We should have realised when only a mobile phone number was listed. A real company of any size would have a land line.

We ordered a tracking system including rails and pantographs. The promised tracking was supposed to be as good as new. Then we were told it was brand new and made to order. It was scratched and bent and obviously worn. So we got low quality but workable rails and goods not as described. Also they promised rail extensions but those never appeared. The pantographs were much smaller than described and poor quality with burred edges ready to cut an unwary finger. So quite shoddy but maybe if it was cheaper it would do for an amateur's shed.

The coving was complete rubbish. It was supposed to have come second hand from a studio. As it turned out it was especially made for us. It was made from several ply of fibreglass and was so badly made it was not usable at all. Imagine a pile of lasagne sheets after you pour a kettle of hot water over them. Or imagine a few pages of mediaeval parchment that a toddler had spilled a pot of glue on. Also the key elements of coving, the corner curve was not supplied at all.

Despite being given many chances to remedy the situation all that we got were tactics designed to delay including false promises of a representative to visit, and bogus delivery notes and tracking numbers.

First they did not respond in a timely fashion. When they did reply they gave a cock and bull story about the corner pieces being manufactured. They also promised a shipment but gave no tracking number.

A few days later they said it was going to arrive with another shipper. This never happened either.

Then they gave a string of excuses including the weather and the Christmas break.

Then when pressed for a delivery date and tracking we got given a JPEG scanned image of a TNT consignment. This was a vaguely plausible except that the tracking number referred to a different delivery about 6 months old and the TNT guys who we know could confirm that there was no such delivery. Also there were minor errors that only a human could introduce. The TNT database would have rejected the details given. This was a photoshop job designed to stall and waste time. And clear evidence of fraudulent intent.

Then they changed their phone number to another mobile phone number. This is not the mark of a trustworthy company.

Then it was more nonsense about the weather holding up the packers. The packers were called "Pendign Packing" and somehow this company has managed to operate without getting a single mention on the web. But they happen to have the same postcode as Studio and Stage.
Then another pair of tracking numbers. One worked, the other didn't. In fact the other number was for a different consignment not destined for us at all. So some laughably amateurish attempts at flat coving looking like some sort of wrinkled parchment arrived. Then the curves arrived in several consignments. And the vital corner part never arrived at all. Like the keystone of a bridge, without this part, the whole coving can not be built. Personally I think that it is a difficult shape and they ran out of fibreglass trying to make something that they are clearly not competent to build.

So to sum up the trading standards points:
Goods not as described - Tracking was not new but worn. Neither did it have the promised extensions.
Inferior product - Coving is not of merchantable quality.
Goods not received in full - The corner part was missing.

And then the endless delaying tactics and bluff and bluster. This company is incompetent and fraudulent and should not trusted by anyone.

Inserter boards arrived

(Probably)
Nobody was home to accept the boards so they went back to the sorting office. The Irish Post Office confused matters because their tracking said that my package arrived in the United States.
Maybe the Irish Post Office thinks that the UK is about to become another American state?
Or maybe there was a clerical error at the manufacturers?
Or the An Post tracking system just doesn't work?
Hopefully the correct boards will be in the hands of the Royal Mail when I go there in the morning.
Engineering Change Note 2. Cut RESETN track to U2-40 and tie the pin to +VDD via 10k. Link RESETN to U3-1 and rename it CSN.
[Update: I got somebody else's boards. My boards ended up in the USA. Cockup in the post room I expect. Beta Layout had the boards remade in Germany and they arrived couriered in a couple of days after the mix-up was revealed. They had also been electrically tested as I could see from the pin marks. I would have awarded full marks for customer service. However the boards didn't come with my solder sucker (free gift for new customers) or the stainless steel laser cut solder stencil (which I didn't want anyway).

Teletext Inserter

A very long way to go with this project but all the hardware is now procured. This is the bare board still at the manufacturer complete except for the routing.

From blogpics

As for the software the command interpreter is running but doesn't have many commands yet. The settings code is installed but there are no settings to save just yet. Today's task is to generate packet 8/30 format 1. As there is no real time clock this will rely on getting synced up regularly and after power cuts.

Adulteration

At school, the extraordinary history teacher "Jock" taught us all sorts of things, not all of them on the syllabus. One of these was about adulteration of food in Victorian times. Chalk was being put in milk and flour to whiten it and bulk it up! Flour had other flours made from potato, peas and beans added for bulk. Thank goodness that doesn't happen now!

Which brings us to Penguin Biscuits. We all love that chocolate covered biscuit with a nice cuppa and a very fine tradition they are too. The ingredients include soya (bean flour) and calcium carbonate (chalk).

But nowadays due to the wonder of marketing, chalk is now a selling point ("Added Calcium") and therefore helps build childrens' bones.

Creationist Nonsense of the Day

Who needs a healthcare plan when you have this website on your side?
http://www.pray4trig.com/

This particular quote showed breathtaking ignorance:

God didn’t play any pranks on us. Dinosaurs were killed in the Flood buried under many layers of sediment in a matter of days and compressed under water deep enough to cover all the mountains of the Earth. That’s MILES of water. Incredible pressure. That’s how they became fossilized.

I can see at least five things wrong in that small quote. Everything in it is contradictory to the actual evidence. The scary thing is that nearly half of the USA population believes this nonsense.

Mattair XMega Development Board

Today a package arrived for me. Although it said "Priority" all over it, three weeks seems like a pretty poor interpretation of priority. Anyway, it was the new AVR Xmega development board from Justin Mattair . Despite the best efforts of USPS and Royal Mail to squash the box, it seems that the generous allocation of header pins provided structural support and prevented any damage. So I plugged it in and the blinkenleds demo started and the com port popped up.
Did I mention the pins? There are too many of them too close together to be able to fit more than one IDC cable header. So the cutters will trim one or two ports to size. One curious bit of design. The ground vias all have thermal relief patterns.

Demo time. A blob of solder connects one of the links required for the new demo. The instructions are a bit sparse and it said to link J15 and J27 but J15 is only needed for the mini joystick which isn't fitted anyway. Next it said remove the programming link. Where is that? I guess there is only one link that is removable. And indeed pressing the hardware button magically the unit becomes an AVRISP mkII. Where is the device driver? Hidden in AVR Studio 4 of course. Then it asks if I want to upgrade the firmware. Probably not! That is the quickest way to kill a programmer. With great trepidation I press the Program button and all the lights go out. Now what? I replace the programming link, press the reset button and we revert back to a serial device. Hmm, maybe that isn't what we wanted to do? Where is the USB/SPI bridge? I guess the USB chip needs a quick go with Flip.
So on with the jumper, hold HWB and jab at reset. Oh wow. Now we have mounted a DFU. Scrabble around for the Flip driver and "Your new hardware is installed and ready to use". So in Flip I look for the Xmega but heck, it isn't supported???? Oh, thats right, its the OTHER AVR I am supposed to be programming. Now it all programs OK and it is time to click Start Application. Bye bye DFU and hello XD200 USB-SPI configuration page. What do I do with this? Confused now. Where do I put these drive mounting commands in? Oh right. Its the magic jumper that needs to come off.
So now the terminal goes crazy flickering. That is different. Press the "any" key and wow, here are all the goodies :-)
What is the temperature? "Demo has not been written". I already knew it was 21C so that is no great loss.
Blink LEDs. Yes. blinkenleds are in full working order.
Finally a look at what I really need to be checking out. The SD card slot. And we have the magic incantations
di0
ds0
fi0
fs
fl
Wow. Now I can read my files.

Next to sort out why exporting Kicad to GC-Prevue put all my drill holes at the same location.....

It has a name! VBIT, a low cost teletext inserter

There comes a time in every project when it needs a name. This moment came when I had a pile of blueprints all with the title field empty. So VBIT is the name of this gadget. VBI is for vertical blanking interval and T is for teletext.
Isn't EDA software fun? Lucky I got all the components first and laid them out on a printout of the top layer. Why did the programmers postfix footprints with E for narrow and N for extended? So I had to swap these around. Also the SOIC pads were too small for hand soldering so I had to stretch them all by 1mm. Then the auto routing is brain dead so I had to lay out all the tracks manually. FreeRoute is very good but then I can't import the results back because the pads and tracks don't exactly line up so it fails the design rules check.
Then plotting to Gerbers is like warping back in time 30 years, when everything had to fit on a double density floppy. Why do I need to know all about drill decks and aperture lists? Madness!
So the design is now at the PCB maker but I already spotted an error. No pull-ups on the I2C. Oops. This is what it would look like if the pull-ups were fitted.

Engineering Change Note 1: pull up SCL and SDA to +3.3v using 3k3 resistors.