I recently knocked my Blue Yeti over. That’s it… it fell sideways (didn’t drop on anything, etc. – just fell sideways).
After that, it wouldn’t come out of “mute”. I tried reinstalling drivers, fiddling with Logitech G-Hub, unplugging it, plugging it in. Restarting Windows, etc. Nothing helped.
Then I found a video that explained it. You have to Factory Reset the mic. And it’s a simple process.
1) Unplug the USB.
2) Hold the two buttons (front and back) and plug it in.
3) Wait about 7-10 seconds, and the front ring will start rapidly flashing.
4) Let go and VOILA!
Simple process… worked very quickly and now I can properly mute and unmute my Yeti.
One of the bonuses from LightFactory, is the iOS app for controlling shortcuts. In LightFactory, you can set just about ANYTHING to a shortcut. And then just click the right button to do what you want. We have a Windows PC we run this on, and the Shortcut screen is just a big list of buttons. Seems to work well for what we want.
Except… most of the people who will be managing the lights… are Mobile/Tablet folks… and not PC users.
So, when I saw LightFactory had an app to launch your shortcuts for the iPad (we use a lot of iPads at church for OnSong and such).
LightFactory Shortcuts for iOS
Yup… just a big ‘ol screen of buttons. You setup your shortcuts in LightFactory and then you can use them via the iPad.
However, every time we went to start the app… it found my LightFactory software on the local network, and then hung and crashed.
According to everything I was reading, it Should Just Work ™.
After some thinking and contemplating… I had an epiphany. It’s seeing my install, but not communicating over the network properly. And then I remembered the Firewall notice when I first launched the LightFactory app.
So I checked… and noticed that the Firewall was set to block traffic on the Private connections and allow on Public. That got me thinking…
And I realized that my internet connection was Public, and it should be Private (since I was one the private church wifi. I switched the WiFi to be Private Network (which makes devices discoverable on the network).
After making that change, I restarted LightFactory and tried the iPad Shortcuts for LightFactory app again. TADA! Worked great!
So… if you are using LightFactory and the iOS app (or their Android control app) and it just seems to hang… check to make sure that your Firewall settings and Public/Private network settings are all correct. :)
At my church, we recently started upgrading our platform lighting system. Our original platform lights, consisted of some old flood lights on a light bar. Over the years, they have slowly died. When we replaced them, we had 3 working lights left. Our platform looked a little anemic. :)
The decision was made to upgrade, so we talked to Sweetwater, and they recommended using DMX controlled lights. That basically meant we could control those lights from a control board or software. We bought their recommendations… Full RGB and some moveable spotlights.
We chose to use software to control the lights. So we purchased the Enttec DMX USB Pro Mk2. It’s a USB to DMX device. A very nice little piece of hardware that does what it should… and does it well.
Enttec DMX USB Pro Mk2
Then began the long and arduous process of finding software to control the lights. Enttec provides a list of compatible software on their website. Unfortunately, much of the software for controlling DMX systems looks like it was designed by engineers. Drunken engineers who wanted to see how many buttons they can put on a screen. And use some really old developer UI tools to do it. I suffered through some truly horrible UIs.
After trying several tools, I found LightFactory. It had a couple of things going for it. 1) a working demo. You get a 1 minute delay on startup… and then you can use the software “unlimited” for 30 minutes. 2) it was reasonable priced. 3) it was one of the few that just worked. (you’d be surprised how many of the software options I tried just did not work)
We are now in the process of tuning and tweaking our lighting. I’ll try to post another piece with some pictures of our new lighting setup.
I have Win7 Ultimate. I have my background pictures set to auto-rotate every 30 minutes.
Every week or three, I change the folder that the pictures rotate through. I’ve done this for a couple of months, and it’s been fine so far.
Yesterday, I grabbed a couple more images from Digital Blasphemy out of the “free bin”. I then told Win7 to rotate through these.
It wouldn’t. It stayed permanently on the last image from the prior choice. I started checking everything. I tried changing folders, changing themes, rebooting, changing screen resolution… nothing.
So I asked Google… after much digging on an old forum post, I found this:
Since I’m a contract developer, I work for many different clients. That means, I need many different work environments. The simplest solution to this, is to use Virtual Machines.
I used to use VMWare. Now that I have a TechNet subscription, I’m playing with Virtual PC 2007. So far, it works pretty well. Very similar to VMware.
I’ll be researching tips on how to keep the VM’s as small as possible, yet still fast. I plan on setting up a base Windows XP with SP3, and then copy that as my starting point for each client. It’s rare that I use any OS other than XP.
I will make a VM of Ubuntu though. I want to play with that some more, and I don’t want to dual-boot at this point.
Note: To get the Virtual PC to release your mouse, hit the [hostkey]. By default, this is the Right Alt.
