ken collins Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 We run a digital reader board during our show. Any way to take advantage of the new RDS upgrade it display on a digital reader board? Just doing research for next years show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hbomb341 Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 ken collins wrote: We run a digital reader board during our show. Any way to take advantage of the new RDS upgrade it display on a digital reader board? Just doing research for next years show.Yes - People are using a betaBright toward the bottom is a psot on it.http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/forum72/18055-4.htmlHarrison Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texan78 Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 If it is not a BetaBrite brand then the post won't help you. The solution they posted were for those using the actual BetaBrite brand.Do you know which brand you are using? I am actually looking in on this too for next year and would like to take advantage of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken collins Posted December 10, 2008 Author Share Posted December 10, 2008 I'm use'n an Alpha 420 series, just something I picked up on E bay. I haven't checked into it too much. Just some general messages about our show. Sure would be fun to take advantage of the new updates though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Fischer Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 Alpha and Betabright are both by the same company (AMS) so you might still be in luck.I need to check into this again now that we have this capability in S2. I have a BetaBrite Prism which uses a USB instead of a serial interface, so I'm not sure if that program will work for me or not...-Tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken collins Posted December 10, 2008 Author Share Posted December 10, 2008 Thanks Tim, I thought they were compatable, but have no experence with em. I know ours has been a great little machine, and has done everything I wanted this year. Caught me off guard, I wasn't expecting an upgrade. Thanks for getting back me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texan78 Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 Tim Fischer wrote: Alpha and Betabright are both by the same company (AMS) so you might still be in luck.I need to check into this again now that we have this capability in S2. I have a BetaBrite Prism which uses a USB instead of a serial interface, so I'm not sure if that program will work for me or not...-TimThat is actually the unit I was looking into getting and doing some research on today. I am curious how the RDS would work through the USB though. Also how you would connect from your PC to the BetaBrite in a practical way. A 50' USB just wouldn't be practical IMO and possibly costly. If Anything I would just like to use to to scroll display hours and what not.I noticed it has pre-set animations and one is a Christmas one. Is it really good? I show a screen shot of it and it looked amazing. Also how weatherproof are these units? Are they good to be left outside or do they need to have a protective case made for them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Fischer Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 Texan78That is actually the unit I was looking into getting and doing some research on today. I am curious how the RDS would work through the USB though. Also how you would connect from your PC to the BetaBrite in a practical way. A 50' USB just wouldn't be practical IMO and possibly costly. If Anything I would just like to use to to scroll display hours and what not.I noticed it has pre-set animations and one is a Christmas one. Is it really good? I show a screen shot of it and it looked amazing. Also how weatherproof are these units? Are they good to be left outside or do they need to have a protective case made for them?My sign is inside, in my home office's front window, so it's very close to my computer. If you wanted the sign further away, then USB might be an issue since there's a physical limit how far you can go with USB (at least without a hub). The units are definitely not weatherproof but it wouldn't be that hard to build a box of some sort with a plexi front...As for the built-in animations, they're ok, but not customizable. If I recall correctly they have one Christmas one, that has santa flying by and says "Merry Xmas". They might also have a Happy Holidays one, I can't remember, but they do have a bunch of other holidays, as well as some business-related ones.The coolest thing is that they're full RGB color so they look very nice.-Tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texan78 Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 Yea the full RGB is really nice. The pictures I have seen of them are very clean.Yea I guess I am going to have to make a case for it. Shouldn't be hard to do and I already have an easy idea.I was looking into a wireless solution but couldn't find one. The Alpha 9000 I think it was has a wireless interface. One thing I did notice is it has RS-232 connection. If that is the case that is a 6 pin connection so you could go RS-232 to RJ-45 and would be a lot more practical since CAT5 is cheaper to buy and easier to run. If I do that I am sure I could put together some kind of RSS solution to send the data over the cat5 to the BetaBrite.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Fischer Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 Texan78 wrote:If I do that I am sure I could put together some kind of RSS solution to send the data over the cat5 to the BetaBrite....You just reminded me of something I had forgot -- There's a free RSS reader for BetaBrite (including the Prism) out there -- I was playing with it last January when I was trying to figure out a use for the sign the other 11 months of the year, other than the "clock" I usually use it as. It never got past the "check if it works" stage but it did work -- I had it downloading headlines from our paper and pushing them to the sign...Here's the link:http://www.kitchi-rss.com/-Tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Fischer Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 (yet another doublepost) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texan78 Posted December 10, 2008 Share Posted December 10, 2008 Yep I have seen that which is why the wheels got turning about using RSS. They make dongles to go from RS-232 to cat5. So during the off season I am going to play with this and see what I can come up with. I know a lot of people on the weather boards who use this with there weather stations. So I am going to try to hook it up to mine and display weather info like temp also with the display info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fire_paramedic Posted December 12, 2008 Share Posted December 12, 2008 Heres what i managed to do with Kitchi-rss and airomate. I get kitchi to read the rdsdata.txt file for the currents rds data that airomate id reading and then kitchi sends it to the betabrite sign. i added a few extra lines of txt on the inputs in the set up of kitchi ie. "Song Now Playing" and its shows what song is playing and any other msg i want. and airomate is sending out the rds data also. using lor 2.1.4 with the windows command feature. i just have kichi recheck the file using the timer function about every 5 seconds so it updates the sign for the proper song/show playing. I also added rds txt for even traffic and announcements so they show as well. been working pretty good so far.Now if thats as clear as mud I m sure i can explain it better if any one is interested in doing that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Fischer Posted December 12, 2008 Share Posted December 12, 2008 I don't think I'll be updating or tweaking my show until next year, but I'm sure I'll have some questions at that time. I'm also interested in doing RDS, if it's not too expensive (it's one of those things that are 'nice to have' but not worth a lot of $$'s in my opinion, since so few cars will have it). Thanks for all the input.-Tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ken collins Posted December 12, 2008 Author Share Posted December 12, 2008 I'm in the same boat as Tim, just doing research for next years show. I'm pretty sure this will all be brought up again. Thanks again for everybody's input Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Hamilton Posted December 19, 2008 Share Posted December 19, 2008 fire_paramedic wrote: Heres what i managed to do with Kitchi-rss and airomate. I get kitchi to read the rdsdata.txt file for the currents rds data that airomate id reading and then kitchi sends it to the betabrite sign. i added a few extra lines of txt on the inputs in the set up of kitchi ie. "Song Now Playing" and its shows what song is playing and any other msg i want. and airomate is sending out the rds data also. using lor 2.1.4 with the windows command feature. i just have kichi recheck the file using the timer function about every 5 seconds so it updates the sign for the proper song/show playing. I also added rds txt for even traffic and announcements so they show as well. been working pretty good so far.Now if thats as clear as mud I m sure i can explain it better if any one is interested in doing that.That is pretty cool. I am going to experiment with that. I have the USB version of the BetaBrite, so not sure if Kitchi will support it or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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