Had so much fun running 8 projectors at HOWL this year. HOWL is an annual (in its 7th year) halloween party in Portland, put on by the City Repair Project. This year I was given the task (and budget) to do all of the lighting for the main room (The Crypt).

The final installation consisted of 8 projectors all wrapped around the room. 3 on the long wall, 2 on the entry wall, 1 on side, 1 on side, and 1 on the last side (the room has a tertis-like config).

David Elliot (from Eugene OR) came up to Portland for the show as well. David is a skilled VJ and talented monkey on a ladder. David ran visuals for the first half of the night, and was a huge help to the success of the installation.

I was so busy with footage prep and setup that I failed to take any pictures or video myself (oops..). So a big thanks to those who did capture bits of the night, and let me use the imagery. Photography by Chad Settlemier.

Recently my buddy Gabe (www.gabesimagination.com) blew my mind while we were VJing. He set his gear up, locked it down, and walked off to go mingle and be found on the dance floor, all while keeping control of the visuals - from his phone. He was using an Android, which is openSource ( and I think running a linux kernel....), and he found an app that will transmit OSC messages over wifi. We all know the iPhone can do this too, but both of those phones are a bit pricey at the moment. I have a windows mobile device (LG Incite) that I got for FREE when signing a plan... The task: can this glitchy windows mobile device control visuals? Yes it can. P.S. All links and downloads are available at the bottom of this post.

I started by looking for OSC applications for windows mobile. All the iPhone and Android apps are OSC, there must be one out there... ask google. I spent some time searching for things like ' "open sound control" + "windows mobile" ' with little luck... Maybe someone has a post somewhere about midi and windows mobile.. And I find it. It is called Theresa (http://dada.perl.it/theresa/) and it is open source!

Theresa works only in Windows, as it is a client/server application. The small server daemon runs on the host machine, and the client runs on your phone. The one (somewhat big) hiccup I found in this setup is that if your phone goes to sleep, receives a call, or anything other than dedicated midi control, you have to restart both the client and server. The client can restart but the server will never disconnect (close and reopen socket if can't send connection msg every 3min....) and you have to manually quit and restart the server. You can restart the server with a remote desktop connection from phone, but this is still a pain and visuals will be stale by the time it is fixed.

Now onto using Theresa with Resolume2 (yes I still love that solid little app). Theresa only has faders and buttons and the buttons are toggle only. Both of these controls send midi control change messages only, which Resolume 2 needs some note messages for some controls (I will get to this in a sec). The interface is very configurable via an XML file and you can place buttons and faders based on pixel x y values. I configured an interface for resolume2 that needs a few tw3aks here and there but it works. Here is the interface with function explanation:

I used Pure Data (http://puredata.info/) to translate the midi messages from ControlChange into NoteOn messages. I also used MidiYoke (http://www.midiox.com/index.htm?http://www.midiox.com/myoke.htm) to separate the incoming from phone from outgoing from PD, so that Resolume only hears what is coming from PD (Remember to set this in the Resolume Prefrences for MIDI!!! ). And of course set the PD midi prefrences to incoming:midiYoke1 outgoing:midiYoke2.

The basic usage guide is as follows:
start Theresaserver.exe
start theresa.pd
(in PD) select midi in and out (in from yoke1; out yoke2;)
start Resolume 2.4
(in Reso) load theresa.xml midi map
(in Reso) disable input from midiYoke1
Now start Theresa.exe on your phone
(on Theresa) open settings - topBtn chooses activeSync vs WLAN, choose WLAN and enter the IP address of the machine running the server (my performance machine has static IP set). note:you must be already connected to your wifi network on your phone.
(on Theresa) restart Theresa to connect to server (glitchy I know...)
(on Theresa) open settings - choose the midi Device (midiYoke1), and set the Layout to resolume2.
(on Theresa) farLeftBtn is open preset : open preset named resolume2

That seems like a lot of steps but it's pretty quick. Hopefully I will have the time soon to write a script that does most of this for you, as well as a few minor changes in Theresa..

Here is a package with a few files for Theresa to control Resolume2. See the ReadMe file for install instructions and more specifics on usage. Hopefully I will have some time to modify the source a bit to make a button that does not toggle (done, contact me if you want my compiled version.).

http://www.pleasuretek.com/files/TheresaFiles.zip

Tags: MIDI, portable, Resolume, VJ, Windows Mobile Device

Finally opened up premiere and blended these short clips from EmrgNSee. I became somewhat of a monkey by the end of the festival climbing around the dome. Better than some jankie night club ladders I have climbed...

Tags: Emrg+N+See, festival, geodesic dome, projection, Visuals, VJ

So I am often wanting to get more documentation of my visuals at a party. Here is a short show reel from the Emrg+N+See Hype party with Lando Kal at the Crown Room. Check a short video of the night:

Tags: Emrg+N+See, lazer sword, pleasuretek, VJ

Resolume 3 is a lot of fun. With the new audio features it is easy to look over some of the new video features, such as the Keystone plugin or FFGLVertexControl. The Keystone plugin is a new FreeFrameGL plugin which easily controls each corner of the video playing. This can be used if your projector doesn't have horizontal keystoning to adjust the image... Or I have found it is easy to accomplish surface mapping. By placing the Keystone effect on each layer (Layer Effects), you can move the corners to align with corners and edges in real-space. Too Easy...

I am also very surprised at how little computing power is needed. The example video is run off of a (3 yr old) 2Ghz dual core laptop with ATI X1400 (128MB), which this laptop could run 9 layers each placed and still achieve ~15-20FPS. I have run similar tests with patches I made in VVVV that can barely run 3 videos at a little lower frame rate. The codec used was picVideo MJPEG. Maybe there is a more efficient way to do it in VVVV, I just haven't found that trick yet.

This example was taken in on my back porch with single projector aimed at my fence and side of house. One laptop running 5 layers, each with the keystone plugin. Video clips were created in after effects.

One thing about using the Keystone plugin to achieve mapping, is that it sometimes distorts the image (odd bend to one polygon [and texture] in 5-vertex quad, other 3 polygons map correctly). I would also like to see a parameter for the z-index. A Z index would create a more realistic mapping as you could push corners back to match architecture. I hope the next update has this. Also the Keystone plugin did not ship with the final versions of Resolume 3, To use the plugin (on Windows) you must download an old beta version - install - and copy the FFGLVertexControl.dll from the Resolumexxx\plugins\vfx directory into the final release plugin directory, upon next launch it will appear.

Have fun mapping..

Tags: Resolume, Surface Mapping, Visuals, VJ, VVVV

I am back to creating web sites again at the moment. A lot of time gets put into every custom site and the payoff isn't that great, although it is better than a normal IT position..

I have been getting better at managing my "social networking" sites lately. Even applying a unified theme across my blog, main site, and myspace. I think I am about to go on a twitter rampage now that I have it really set up with my phone... beware.

I have been showing audio-reactive 3D visuals at clubs and parties for around 3 years now. Every different venue I walk into, first thing I start to do is look around at the ceiling, Where could I mount a projector? I have come across many solutions that get the job done, however pointed out recently on VJForums (by SleepyTom) some of my previous solutions were made of cloth or parachute chord attached to a wooden plank, and were not safe as far as fire hazard and redundancy. So a desicion was made to make a proffesional and firesafe mount that is versitile..

Price was of most importance. So I started with a projector mount from ebay for 17.99 (with free shipping too!). I was timid about universal mounts but now that I have one, It works perfect on all three projectors I have tested it on, as well as came with 3 sets of screws that match most projectors, I have used two sets of the included screws.

Getting the ceiling mount to a pipe clamp was too easy, get some fire treated wood from home depot scraps ($1) and take it home to drill 5 holes through, cut out a circle the size of the mount, and spray paint it black (black spray paint I already had in the basement, but for kicks I will say $3). I made a few of the wooden pieces while I was at it so that I could keep the clamps attached and switch clamps out quicker.

I went to a specialty lighting store to get my pipe clamps as I am usually attaching to a truss system that is already installed somewhere. I bought two different sizes of pipe clamps, a smaller one that can fit around a 1.5" pole and a bigger one that fits a 3". The smaller cost $5 and the bigger was $7. I want to get an even bigger clamp, but I have not found any cheap enough or satisfactory to my likings, I know I will stumble upon a deal someday though.

Finally the safety cable to save the projector in the worst case scenerio. I chose a 4ft 300lb test cable at home depot for $6, and a clamp for $2. I wrap the safety cord around something solid and then aroundboth the base of projector/mount and through some of the grill on the projector (wire too thick to fit in actual security slots..)

So the final cost is (18+1+3+5+7+6+2=) $42 and a professional projector mount that will attach to pipes on the ceiling.

A few notes about use, Always reinforce the 2 screws that hold the mount together with black electrical tape so that audio vibrations do not shake the projector loose (get some good strech from the tape, those flat hand screws won't budge). The projector will be aproximently 10" from pole it is attached to, this is enough to clear small to midsize lights but not full size par can lights. Here are some pictures of the rig, hope this helps someone down the line.

Tags: club safety, projector, VJ

I have been working on a project for my Wireless Security class for a couple of weeks now. I have been generating pre-computed databases of WPA passwords salted with the ESSID(broadcast network name) for three solid days now. Good thing Ive got a couple machines around to occupy myself as my bigBox works.

Nothing new, classic time-memory trade off, applied to cracking WPA passwords. A typical dictionary scan of passwords can take a full 24hrs+ depending on the dictionary being used. By pre-computing the PMK(pairwise master key) of combined password and ESSID, the time to test passwords is reduced to 10-30min. I have noticed as well that with previous versions of Aircrack-ng, only all lowercase-numeric passwords could be cracked. Although it't ture that the majority of end.Users select all lowercase words and are therefore vulnerable, I would like to have a more robust pen-testing tool that can detect any form of weak passwords. Once my new database is finished I will be putting it to the test on many specialized situations and different APs.

Although WPA can be cracked it is still quite strong, it just needs some end.User education on password strength. A decent password to keep your wireless AP protected is a minimum of 20 characters. WPA can be set with as little as 8 char, and as many as 63. When the length of the password is over 20 char then the hacker has to carry around ~200GB datasets. Remember too that the key is "salted" with the network name so name it anything other than the default name. This makes a hackers pre-computed database completely useless, therefore making him choose to A) run a dictionary attack for hours B) go home and compute a database with only your SSID and big dictionary or C) go crack your neighbors wireless since they left it on default...
I hope Aircrack-ng and Airolib-ng handle Capitol letters these days. It would make my project much more exiting and cause me to go generate a rather large dataset....

Tags: wifi

I am sad that I am about to be done with school soon. I have learned a lot this past two years. Probably learned more from sitting on the computer at home with as much free time to surf and read about interesting stuff. But all that time is going to end soon.. back to work.

This semester (it is summer semester after all) is easy. I am taking two business classes and a Linux class. The two business classes are a total breeze, 'Fundamentals of Mangement' and 'Business Law 1'. Both involve lots of reading and mindless memorization, which involves me with no shirt on getting some sun on the porch ;) My Linux class is going to be a breeze as well as most of the class has never installed Linux much less have any experience with BASH... and me who used to have a music moniker of sudo (now Hakboy). I used to kinda fear easy Certs like the CompTia Linux+ but now I know how easy a lot of these are, and which ones I need to schedule in soon....

PS. I cut off all my hair... I had long hair to the middle of my back and just a few days ago I cut it short. feels lighter.

Tags: school

Been drooling over pleasuretek.com for a while. Should be a good webDev resume piece as well as a fun project to work on over the next few months. There has been a lot going on lately, of course right?.. now back to work in migrating some old blogs over here and designing all this flash content.

Tags: site