G'day from the land of Oz. Firstly, I apologize for the length of this posting, but I've been a member of this forum for a little while, and I suspect I'm going to need at least a G3 as part of the answer to this post. I've posted this here only. I have also searched the net, but can't find any info.
I'm asking for advice on a very unusual problem. To start off, an outline..... I have a very good mate who is a buddist, and immigrated to Oz 27 years ago, from Sri Lanka. As part of the public celebration for Buddas birthday in May, in Melbourne, Oz, they set up a complex light display some years ago. Everything has been donated. It started life with 40 circuits, and now has 88, totally over 4000 bulbs. It's driven by 12v DC/240v AC relays, which in turn are operated from a 1.3 metre diameter, 1.4 meter high drum, (4 foot 3 x 4 foot 7 approx.), mounted vertically. Around it are 88 levels of intermittant copper strips. Each level controls one circuit, and each has varying numbers of strips, with each strip in different positions, and of varying lengths. As well, there are two copper slipper rings for 12V power and earth. The whole shebang is driven by a variable speed 12V wiper motor, takes between 1-8 minutes to rotate, and has, of all things, wire coathangers as pickup contacts. The internal wiring is a nightmare, and totally undocumented. It's wired off the top off their heads. To cap it all off, they like to vary the display every year, which means removing, re-lengthening, and re-positioning the strips, and every couple of years they add more circuits, which then means building a new, taller drum (they run out of space for new bloody holes anyway). In Sri Lanka, they apparently have displays with thousands of circuits, driven by dozens of drums. People are actually employed 6 months of the year to build them. For several months a year, my mate & friends are not popular with their wives, who are referred to as 'lighting widows' (sound familiar?). After falling over in admiration, I suggested the whole damn thing might be able to run from a computer, specifically a Mac. Should have kept my big mouth closed. Turns out a friendly electrical engineer, who was an avowed PC devotee, had tried to do it two years ago, and given up in disgust. After they got enthusiastic, I got dobbed in ( which in Oz basically means THEY volunteered MY services on THEIR behalf). So, I'm turning to the Mac community. What they need to do, via hardware AND software, is this.... *** Control (switch on, switch off), at least 88 circuits, preferably in 12 volts, so they don't have to beg for replacement relays. *** They must be able to easily add circuits (they have REAL big plans). *** Each circuit must be able to switch on as often as they like, for differing periods of time each switching, down to seconds or better. *** As many circuits as possible must SOMETIMES switch on/off simultaneously, but individual ones can go on/off at various times. We're talking blink of an eye stuff here; apparently that's important. *** Switching between circuits must be fast. Some displays SOMETIMES switch on/off in rapid sequential bursts, eg. a radial lotus flower. *** In addition, unknown to them, I'm adding to the wish list. It would also be nice if SOME circuits could be dimmed/brightened. Problem is, the main circuits are 240v AC/ 50 mhz (British standard). I know that eliminates their existing relays, but what's the chances of adding additional relays/controllers to add dimming? Absolutely impossible with their existing set-up. *** They would love to be able to have displays that take much longer than 8 minutes max to cycle. *** They would like to be able to set up and save display cycles/pages/whatever. *** The clincher. These blokes (including two monks) are absolute computer novices, so the driving software must be dead easy to set up. I'll give them as much help as I can, but they're 100 miles away. What I would REALLY like for them is a graphics driven interface. Ideally, what WAS their copper strips would appear as as series of graph lines/bars, that could be copied, pasted, re-positioned, re-lengthened, with all circuits being able to be over-lapped/matched/spaced out, whatever they like. They would all need to be on a single, scrollable page of presentation. All that also means some bars must disappear off the right, and appear on the left. There is no definite start/stop. If everything appears as numbers, aka PC style (shudder), these poor buggers will have NO hope. *** Absolutely everything they do is via donations, either from business, or from their own pockets, so the older the Mac can be to run this, the better their chances. Even their Monks have to be fed & clothed by the efforts of the congregation, and receive no pay/allowance. I've got an old LC III (32 meg, 1 Gig, 2x 400 meg ext. SCSI HD's, 13" colour monitor) that I would happily donate, but I suspect it's not up to the job, particularly re. interfacing.. I thought of heaps of chained powered usb hubs, but my limited experience many years ago with RS-232 (Apple IIe) interfacing makes me suspect something like FireWire will be needed just for the speed requirement. Just guessing. Is it possible to get any sort of hub made up with a great swag of ports, or simple wire connectors? That's pretty much it. I'm really looking for advice, especially regarding suitable software, but if any-one's got something lying around that would help, I'd consider paying freight to Oz, as a donation (no, please, I don't mean an old mainframe, grin). If this is an inappropriate forum, would some-one mind pointing me to a more suitable posting location please? Many thanks in anticipation, :-) Santa -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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