Live sound engineering is facing its biggest change ever during the winter 2012...13. Transition from tubes to transistors or from analog to digital was just natural evolution.

The way we do live mixing will be totally different than a year ago. The sound system will be controlled with personal mobile gadgets.

Naturally it was Mackie who made affordable equipment available for iPad based live mixing. I am a one man R&D team. I try to develop simple DIY solutions with a vision similar to Greg's.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Motor fader

My idea is to build a wireless iPad remote control for a small band sound system.

Motor fader is a key component in making existing audio equipment machine controllable. Fortunately they are available now at reasonable cost.

MD100AM2B

I ordered 10k audio taper motorized faders from my regular store, Månsteri Store. They cost 20€ a piece which is reasonable but still I minimized the risk and ordered just two pieces for testing first.

The fader is with 100 mm travel and the M3 fixing screws are inline with the slot, so that would easily fit in many existing consoles.

The feel of the fader is just good. The motor turns when when sliding. The motor is coupled to the slider shaft by a teethed belt (morse belt). I tried to short circuit the motor when sliding. You can just feel the difference but that is insignificant.

I am happy that the shaft slot is not upwards but on the side. That keeps shit out of the resistor tracks better.

The PDF datasheet of the fader reveals that it was manufactured in Taiwan by TOP-UP INDUSTRY CORP. I didn't like the lifetime spec on datasheet. It was only 50 000 cycles. We have to keep that in mind when writing software and when using the faders. You can surprise and impress passing chicks with motor faders but not for free.
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