Sad News Alert

i wonder if you could detect a camera flash just before the shutter fires, and use it to switch a bright ass light on to block there camera🤔

Ive been printing parts for Stuart Pittaways film scanner, its mostly constructed, but i gotta get the raspberry pi setup, and i hate working in linux 😒

I was just looking at the last film scanner design i made.
I used some rubber rollers that they use for ink, so i figured when i look at this, the rubber is probably going funny or deformed or something from the constant pressure applied to it, But nope, it looks in pretty good condition.

I took a couple of pictures of it, just so you know im not making it up lol.

This is the main box, i have marked the film path. There is 5 rubber rollers, one for the entrance hole to stop the film from bending, 2 for the inside of the entrance hole, they help feed the film into its little channel, and the two rollers on the right, one is spring tensioned against the other, with the bottom one being driven by a nema 11 stepper motor.

When i just looked at the design, i thought.. "this is like 99% done, why the fuck did i stop". Then i remember it was because of THIS monstrosity.

It should be fairly explanatory, and it works, except that any movement at all, even just a breeze, seems to move the camera enough that it produces unusable images like 50% of the time. I cannot work out how to have both a rock solid mount for the camera and lens, but also have it adjustable.

You can see the screw holes i have in the very top part, they was there to try and prevent the movement, do they? no, no they do not. even with 32 screws (yes i tried it), there is movement. I dont know how, i dont know where, or why, but there is movement and i cannot get rid of it.

So ive found a project by Stuart Pittaway https://github.com/stuartpittaway/Super8FilmScanner

Im printing the parts now, Hopefully its way more stable than mine.
Thats why i was looking at my design, to "borrow" the raspberry pi and stepper drivers from it.

Just finished capturing a tape, it has a lot of Christmas ITV 2003 content on it, including adverts. The quality looked surprisingly good, If i remember, after decoding ill post a picture. The capture size is 250gb😭

Ive been researching the scrambler / sizzler / twister. Im just gonna called it a twister from now on, its what ive known it as most of my life.

It surprisingly difficult to find anything on the modern versions of the ride. There is a few patents out there for the very early models by Eli Bridge Company (i think), And they are pretty detailed, but if i build one, i kinda wanna build one of the ones im familiar with, which is the trailer mounted rides that are pretty much an all in one, Not the "Scrambler" version, which sits directly on the ground with no platform.

Something like this

These captures take up so much fucking space its crazy, and im only doing 30-60min captures, some tapes can be 6 hours.

For example, a 32 minute capture took me 6 and half hours to decode.
With the parallel scripts i mentioned previous, it still took 2 hours, but thats still a pretty long time😒

Im getting that waltzer itch again. I have basically finished the vhs project, most of the time spent on that from now on is capturing and "decoding". so not really an "active" process.

I do wanna try the 8mm film scanner / digitizer project again. I didn't really finish the last one, simply because i couldn't find a way to reliably mount the camera that doesn't result in a ton of movement which is very apparent when focused on such a small area.

I have seen a couple of 3d printed projects online for it, but i dont have most of the stuff they need as they seem to have gone with some weird off choice in components, and one needs a custom pcb, and i dont particularly wanna drop £40 including shipping on a single pcb for a project im not even sure i would be happy with.

I have designed like 3, all of them worked to varying degrees, but none of them i was happy about.

I would like to design one where the camera doesn't need to be 50-100mm away from the subject, because thats when the wobble becomes noticeable. And i dont know enough about photography or math to calculate the exact location needed for the lens / sensor. If i could, then i could just modify my current version i made... maybe there is an online calculator? hmm

Just had my first tape jam, Its not always nice to have stuff neatly organized and tidy... especially when you have to take the fucking vcr apart😭😭

But i dont have an adblocker on youtube... its on my browser 😂

ive kinda made a way to parallel decode the same tape capture with x number of processes.
Ive been running it on some test captures and its working great, im just now trying it on a real capture. Each process is going slightly slower than if it was running by itself, but in total i think ive gone from 3.5ish fps to 8-10fps. Not a massive increase, but it makes a difference when you have 3 hour captures lol

It takes sooooo long to decode a tape. Its running at 3.4ish fps. which is REALLY fucking slow, and my cpu isnt exactly underpowered. 😭

I like ketchup, but the pre-kum is pretty off putting.

I figured hooking the buttons up would be way easier that it actually was, They are multiplexing the buttons, instead of just pulling io pins high or low.

Anyway i got it worked out in the end.

Function - Pins
FF = AN2 / ANF
REW = GND / AN2
STOP = AN3 / ANF
PLAY = AN3 / GND

I printed a couple of these spacers, they mount on some existing mount holes on the back of the vcr.
They keep me from pushing the vcr to far against the wall, so i dont crush the BNC cables.

The mini pc, the box with the pcie card and the lid with the fan. (ignore the wonky display port)

There is a guy outside just shouting at his phone and swearing. Not on the phone, but just looking at it 😂

OMG I just realized, I can close like 40 tabs in firefox now i have the audio issue sorted😈

Ive never done a multi colored print before, so thought if give it ago to make the buttons stand out. Turns out you put the pause to switch filament on the layer you want it to change... who would have guessed 😭

Ive done a couple of things.

Ive changed the rca connector on the back of the vcr with a bnc connector for the audio (note to self, video is on the left as you look at the back of the player). It stuck out way to far, and the shelf im planning on putting it on is kinda shallow already.

Ive designed a little box that im planning on wiring up to the vcr so i can control the buttons without being near the player or using the remote control, which i dont have.

Test has been done, and the audio is sounding way better. Its linear mono audio from a vhs tape, not exactly high quality to begin with though 😂

Well... I checked the mode pins, and there must have been the absolute tiniest little bit of a short between 3v3 and mode1 because i just re-soldered the pads and now im getting the 78125hz expected output, thank fuck.

Im gonna record something and see how the audio sounds 🤞