Tuesday 22 December 2015

New Film Monitor Module - a Work in progress

It is the run up to Christmas, tomorrow we should receive a DMon which I will look at over the break in order to develop the ethernet interface between DMon and the TMC-1.

Whilst waiting for the DMon to arrive I worked on our new Film Monitor Module. Below is a picture of the new unit, still waiting for the front panel overlay but with fully working software.


The film monitor module is the same size as a Avid S6 fader module and may be used stand alone or in the S6. The module includes both the PD-1 and TMC-1, although separate they work together. The Pec Direct can read and build stems from Protools track name information and pass this information to the TMC-1. I plan to add an option to implement the pec/direct monitor functions in the NTP DAD AX32/Penta 720.

The monitor controller is identical to the stand alone TMC-1, the pec-direct section is based on the PD-1. To fit the pec-direct some compromises were necessary, even after saving as much space as possible I still had to lose 3 switches on the left which will involve changes in the functions of the three master switches on the right. The other obvious change is the new OLED display, big, bright and a great viewing angle.

The new 5.5" 256x64 graphical display posed one problem - what do do with all the extra display space? I always liked the DFC stem based track arm display, this inspired me to attempt a similar function in the OLED display. By labelling the stems on alternate sides I was able to fit eight 8-track. The display below shows four 6-track stems with no tracks in record.