Greetings,

The last several days have been "Adventures in Spoofing an Analog Slider/Dial" for me. In trying to come up with a way to do things without a zillion variables per slider, I got bored and started thinking back on CompSci 101. I figured I could store a lot more data with a binary system, so I came up with one. It allows addition, subtraction, and is error checked so it bottoms out at zero and tops out at the max (which is currently 16, but could be expanded).

The unfortunate thing is that now that I have one, I can't figure out how to apply the number being stored to my slider. I think I may be on to something with a 16x1, 8x2, 4x4, 2x8 unit image schema, but I am getting hung up in the details. Anyways, if this is not making much sense to you, don't worry, it is confusing the heck out of me and I am supposed to be good at this stuff :D.

Anyways, I went to all of the trouble of making my binary system and so I thought I'd share it just for kicks. Here is a direct link to the file:
[Link: mx-3000.com]

As promised, if I ever DO manage to figure out the whole slider thing, I will share. I have come up with a couple of solutions, but they are neither scalable, nor practical. If anyone has ever tried to tackle something similar, please PM me and let me know what you came up with.

Okay, I am rambling now, so I am going to stop.

Regards,
-aedile-

I have found a way to do a analog volume but only on select receivers(Marantz sr8002) that have IR direct volumes( vol 23,vol 24, vol 25 etc.) or use the MSC-400's rs232 that have rs232 direct volume codes.

aedile,

I have already addressed this with the new DMX-3000, if you are using the variables in more than just a couple places, (ex, I use the slider on every movie details page) the amount of space you save by using 4 variables instead 16 is no where near the extra space you will use up by making your macros smart enough to check 4 variables each time instead of just 1.

In other words, instead of having a single line in the macro that checks 'v15=1' you will need 4 lines in 4 different macros that check 'v0=1', 'v1=1', 'v2=1', and 'v3=1'

Variables in the remote take up very little space, extra buttons to accomodate more macro lines however take substantially more space.

I commend you on your calculator though, now I want to see it multiply and divide. That binary math is always fun :) Let me know if you want any more info on this.

-3B

Bracken,

Understood. There is, however, a tradeoff. It would seem to me that you would run out of variables (limited to 255 if I am not mistaken, someone correct me if I am wrong) well before you run out of macro space. Am I completely misinformed about number of variables? I can see if your slider resets on every new page and you don't have to maintain state (as would be the case in DMX), but what if you needed to maintain state. Then what if you needed to maintain state in multiple sliders? That variable ceiling is looking more and more like a limiting factor.

Looking forward to seeing the slider in the latest DMX!

-aedile-

You have been misinformed. While 255 is the limit on a number of things in the MX-3000. eg. Number of steps per macro/button, number of buttons per page, number of pages per device, number of devices per remote. It is not the limit of things such as IR codes, images, sounds, or variables per remote since they are remote wide.

In fact, I have created an RCC file with a direction pad controllable maze that is using 3000+ variables and works fine. It would be annoying to try to use this RCC with any normal remote layout since the variable list is rediculously long but it does work just fine and I dont notice any negative efffects on the remote when using this many variables.

Just an FYI. From my work with DMX: The file structure allows for roughly 4.3 billion indexes so use as many variables as you want :-)

-3B

4.3 Billion?? Crap... I JUST added variable number 4,300,000,002!

:-)

Well, thanks for the info. Now that I have barked up the wrong tree for a while, I think I am going to fork my project into "Useless Binary Applications for MX-3000" and "Analog Slider". Thanks for the help Bracken.

-aedile-