Carl's Notes

It's past 1am right now, so this is going to be brief.

Likely due to the major lack of sleep I'd managed to get during the run of The Mousetrap, I got a pretty major cold right afterwards.
It lasted for about a week, but now I'm still feeling the effects of it more than a week after that.
Mostly stuff in my throat and a bunch of coughing.

At least I'm not required to sing until about June, when auditions for the next panto will be.

I'm still coming up with a list of songs I'm considering for my audition.
Due to issues I've been having with my phone, however, the list keeps getting deleted and I have to start it over again.

Right now, I'm looking for a song about three minutes in length, with no long instrumental introduction (not like the early days of band music, where the singer got second billing – if at all – to the band, and had to come in for the second chorus), preferably no instrumental sections, and preferably with just one singer.

My plan for future auditions is to choose a different artist whose work I enjoy each year, to see just how versatile I can be.
My first audition was with Fred Astaire's The Piccolino, which I'd sung for several years before, so I knew how the song went very well.
The second audition was with Matt Dusk's The Theme from the Loaded Gun, song that has great drive in places, and I managed to improvise a sort of dance routine to go along with it. Got a round of applause for that one, too, so I must have done something right. =^.~=

We have just three weeks left in the month, and it doesn't sound like we've found another place to life just yet, though it sounds like there's one that might possibly work.
I'll have to wait until mom and dad make their decision, though I should probably make sure I start to pack up my stuff too...

Final countdown to The Mousetrap in mid-March, so rehearsals are going into overdrive.
I'm still not entirely sure what I'll be doing, aside from "helping out" backstage.

The treasurer for the theatre company was in one day to watch a run-through, and I had been introduced by the director as the ASM (assistant stage manager), though I don't remember being asked just yet.
I'd been told that it's the stage manager's duty to select an ASM, but haven't heard anything officially since.

The set is about halfway done, it needs to be fully assembled where it is now so rehearsing can happen on it, then disassembled, moved and reassembled at the theatre, as well as any final painting that needs to be done.
All the props and costumes are (to my knowledge) complete, even down to the wristwatch that had been picked up for five dollars to go on Molly's wrist, whose band had been too large and had been shortened by our stage manager.
(she's apparently very skilled at many things, so I hope we don't lose her anytime soon!)

I'm still shaking my head at how much the actors were scrambling for lines, though.
We have two more weekends of rehearsals to go, and it looks like I will be helping the actors run lines when they're not needed during a run-through.

The last non-panto rehearsal I've seen was for the last run of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and that was basically the final rehearsal before it was moved into the theatre, so I wasn't privy to all the foibles of the actors as they initially stumbled through their lines, and was largely unfamiliar with any weak points before the show ran and I saw it for a whole week of evenings in a row.

Warning: Gets very technical, so beware!

So, the very first magic wand the theatre company I'm involved with had caused some electrical burns to its original operator due to malpractices by the original creator.
I think it might be fortunate that he's dead now, though I think it was more due to age than an accident with his contraptions.

The second version (that I'm aware of) was the one that our current fairy queen broke this year taking last year's decorations off it, so the third version was the one I fixed up and improved.

The fourth version, which this post is about, is one I've been asked to build to replace our old one.
The fifth version, and there will be one, will have even more features than V4, so we'll either be able to choose which features to enable, or which wand to use for each year after, depending on what features we want to use that year.

( Very technical details are here... )

It's actually quite fascinating knowing a theatre director. You get to learn all sorts of things, and get a bit of an "in" to see even more stuff.

For example, I was able to see what you might call a minimalist production of “Hound of the Baskervilles” that used three males actors and a two-sided fireplace, and was later invited to usher the same show at another venue.
(we joked about starting a new theatre company called Three Men and a Fireplace. It would work! Honest!)

Anyway, there were a few scenes where one of the actors had a small plastic gun they had to fire a series of shots from, but the shot sound effects were part of an audio file played through the sound system, so they had to synchronize their hand motions to the audio file, which didn't work very often.
(well, not to me, anyway)

So I decided that there ought to be a better way to do this.

I found out that they use a program to cue up all the sounds that make up the sound effects portion of the show into a sort of audio script.
It's triggered somewhat like PowerPoint, just keep pressing a key to trigger the effects.

You can also trigger particular effects via other keys on the keyboard if your script isn't actually a single linear progression.
This is important, because it makes what I'm trying to do possible.

I also found out that you can buy a hobbyist-oriented four-button key fob and wirelessly-activated relay.

Put these two thoughts together, and you get a key fob whose relay activates a key on the guts from a USB keyboard.

Now, while you can get USB keyboards pretty cheap nowadays, there is an issue with most of their circuit boards.

The pads used to connect the board to the key matrix do not actually accept solder.
In fact, the one board I'd tried actually had the hot solder roll around on top of it, and broke right back off easily after letting it cool and harden.

Second option was to use any of a multitude of microcontrollers, small very low-end computers that are (usually) easily programmed to do simple tasks.
Well, there aren't too many things simpler than pushing a button when an input changes, so it should work fine, right?

First test was with an Adafruit Trinket, a small ten-pin micro microcontroller that has three data pins and a bunch of power pins. Useful for small projects.
Plus I was able to have it emulate a USB keyboard! =^.^=

Unfortunately, I need about six I/O pins or so (might be up to eight, I'm not sure yet), so while it was great as a temporary test rig, it won't be useful in the long run.

Because the Trinket is compatible with Arduino microcontrollers (as are many microcontrollers nowadays, much to my relief), I'm currently mocking up some software on my recently-purchased Arduino Leonardo (one of their latest official boards) before I choose a smaller board to 'port it over to.

Ideally, I want to put as much of the parts as possible into a small plastic project case so it all looks fairly professional.
(with the added benefit of preventing connections from getting bumped)

Anyway, I'd tried to show my progress to my director friend, and she and her husband (who does the music and sound effects for her shows) are both quite happy about the possibilities.
Unfortunately, due to a faulty cable, I wasn't able to actually demonstrate the project to them, but I will have a working model to show them later.
(honest! =^.~=)