Tag: pacemaker.net

Pacemaker hard drive problems

Pacemaker fixing

It was always going to happen…

A portable dj device which I tend to walk around with while mixing to myself. I accidentally dropped while in the middle of recording a mix. Ever since its been acting a little weird and worst still crashing mid mix.

The song which seems to trigger the hard drive to start clicking happens to be JS16’s Rosegarden 2.0 ironically.

Anyway after 6+ years of use I think its about time I made some upgrades. The great thing about the pacemaker is its pretty much a Linux PC. So a lot of the upgrades should be pretty simple. Of course the pacemaker community can help with everything…

First the hard drive, going with my wired, tired, expired. Its time to move to a solid state drive. I only tend to use about 30gigs of my 120gigs of pacemaker storage. So I’m thinking about getting a 64gigs or even 32gigs… The drive as you can imagine is needs to be a 1.8inch drive, and needs to be ZIF/PATA rather than SATA. According to the post there are two different ZIF connections 0.2 mm and 0.3 mm, although its not clear which one I actually should get.

While I’m doing that I might as well do a replacement on the battery which lasts about a hour right now. Although I discovered I could charge the pacemaker over USB while using it if the USB is pure power and not a computer. Of course I also have the AC adapter but nothing beats having lots of battery power.

This looks to be better done in a workshop?

Thanks goodness the Pacemaker isn’t made up of custom hardware bits…

Pacemaker playback

Blackberry Playbook

Some of you may have noticed my tweets about finally getting a Blackberry Playbook.

Some of you maybe wondering why the hell I bought one of those?

Well the truth is the original pacemaker guys (Olof Berglof, Jonas Norberg and Willem Demmers) sent me one after my experience of the pacemaker app during Over The Air earlier in summer. Blackberry/RIM suggested they might send me one but after the blog post, they pretty much didn’t want anything else to do with me. Bear in mind, this was after I asked them to send me the playbook to test out before I got to Over the Air.

Thanks from the Pacemaker Team

Anyway after the blog post, I shared it with the un-official pacemaker community which had started when Tonium wouldn’t answer any of the questions. This is where the original pacemaker guys (now free after Tonium) saw it and got in touch with me.

The guys admitted the version I was using was a early beta and it was a lot more stable now. We got talking and they agreed to send me a playbook maybe they felt it was the right thing to do or they wanted to keep me involved in the pacemaker community. Either way I’m happy to say I got one thanks to the Pacemaker guys! And its running the Pacemaker App Trial right now.

Pacemaker App

I won’t talk about my frustration with the actual playbook. Including how the mass storage mode failed to work on Ubuntu and how I had to transfer my music collection over wifi using Samba till I discovered this USB hack. Weird thing is it was just as slow. I won’t talk about the pain of trying to get the latest OS update but it not letting me till the battery was over 20% (I left it over night charging in the end). Finally I won’t talk about the pain of getting a blackberry ID.

The Pacemaker trial is rightly so much more stable than the version I experienced before. Its not crashed on me and it does seem a lot more together. But I have to say I still find some of the latency problems are still there (maybe Android 4.1 Butter is needed but you would have thought QNX would be ideal for this). For example don’t try and do hard cuts with the crossfader as you will be very disappointed. The layout makes a little more sense now but I’m finding lots of things are missing from the pacemaker device including recording, effects and of course external output to a mixer. The later means everything you do is played out over the headphones or split into mono.

Pacemaker App

The Pacemaker guys are going to put me on the beta list so hopefully I’ll get a feel for changes and progression soon enough. Right now, its a much poorer relation to the pacemaker device. There is no way I could play out with this, only have a play now and then when in the mood. Still early days and the pacemaker guys have done some great stuff, but I do wonder if it will get good at the point the platform goes away or dissolves. Of course the Pacemaker guys can’t/won’t talk about beyond the playbook but I’m already thinking of solutions around the dual stereo output problem involving usb sound cards or even 2 devices (phone and tablet anyone?)

I’m greatful to the Pacemaker guys for what they did, its really cool. Because although I was thinking about buying a cheap playbook, after my experience I was dead set against Blackberry and the playbook. Good to know certainly people can take feedback on the chin and move forward…

There’s a open life in the Pacemaker yet

pacemaker_sonar_june_2007_07

Just when I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to switch back to using a laptop to dj… I receive a email message from the new Pacemaker community…

As you probably know we were trying to get hold of the Pacemaker source
code so we could see a future for the Pacemaker.

We have now had contact (has joined our forum) from Jonas who was to
original inventor of the Pacemaker and founded Tonium. He has purchased the
rights to the Pacemaker design & software back, and intends to take this
project forware again!

Not only that he has already offered that the GPL’d source code WILL be
made available on Sourceforge.

We are yet to find out Jonas’ intentions, but this is exciting news for all
us Pacemaker users. Keep checking our forum for any updates.

Jonas posted a message on the forum…

Dear PMD users, I invented Pacemaker back in 2005 and founded Tonium later that year. It makes me very happy that PMD is still alive and being used, despite the lack of support and hardship that I know you have gone through. I even recognise some of you from the good old Pacemaker.net days – Sox, Migzy, Regis and many more, you are all remembered.

Developing Pacemaker was among the most exciting things I have ever done. It was a project that came out of a pure passion for music and a feeling that it had to be possible to create a DJ system in the size of an iPod. Developing Pacemaker was also the toughest thing I have ever done. Starting from scratch with nothing but an idea for a hardware device. Luckily, I was very naive and did not foresee the challenges lying ahead.Following the launch and our expansion in the spring of 2008, I was exhausted. We had basically expanded from two people to more than thirty in just a little bit over one year, while developing PMD, PME and Pacemaker.net. Honestly, I was a little bit over my head in managing the kind of company Tonium had become. Therefore I stepped down as the CEO in May 2008. That proved to be a mistake. I was not too impressed with how the company was managed going forwards. But that said, it was not easy for the new management, they were in for a great challenge given the global economy crisis, the smartphone revolution and new disruptive music services popping up. And now, as you all know, Tonium have ceased its operations.

But! I have some news for all of you. On Thursday January 12, it will finally be official that my new company 100 Milligrams have purchased the intellectual property rights for Pacemaker, something I have been trying to do for years. Taking part in this venture is my long time friend Daniel Wallner, co-founder of Tonium and the engineering genius behind Pacemaker®. I am also happy to say that we have added a fresh face and a third member to our core team, Olof Berglof, an innovative designer and marketeer. We have also been able to get a little bit of funding and the three of us are now working day and night to transform Pacemaker into the new music and technology landscape.

We would also like to help supporting PMD users in the best kind of way. Your forum is fantastic and we will point people in your direction as well as trying to be here ourselves as much as possible. When it comes to hardware problems, we will try to be as helpful as we can by providing component information, schematics etc. Unfortunately we cannot promise new firmware versions, at least not for some time. We just do not have the necessary manpower. However, we will in time make sure the auto upgrade from Pacemaker® Editor is working and the GPL source code from Pacemaker Device will be available on SourceForge.

I will personally update you on the progress of the New Pacemaker Project and let me know if you have any questions or ideas.

Cheers,

Jonas (@jonorberg)

How awesome is that!!!
Can’t wait to see what comes next… Open is the way forward, open hardware, open software, open idles…

The Geometry Set

The Geometry Set by cubicgarden

This is my latest mix on my pacemaker. Lots of new tunes and some classics returns.

Its known as just the geometry set, but why? Well most of the mix has something to do with geometry in some way. If you think you can work out the link in each tune, feel free to comment below.

You may have noticed this is also a much shorter mix that I usually do but it didn’t feel the need to be long and drawn out.

Ladies and Gentleman, I present The Geometry Set…

The Geometry Set by cubicgarden

  1. Endless Wave (albion remix) – Kamaya Painters
  2. Heal – Electrique Boutique
  3. Arctic Globe – DJ Governor Presents Orjan
  4. Strange Bends (Kyau Vs Albert) – Sebastian Sand
  5. Shadow World – Thomas Bronzwaer
  6. Call The Galaxy Taxi (Martin Roth Nu Style Remix) – Plastic Angel
  7. The Spring – Ernesto and Alex Fisher
  8. Ultra Curve – Cosmic Gate
  9. Exposure – Gareth Emery
  10. Perfect Wave – peter martin pres anthanasia
  11. The string that binds us (8 wonders remix) – Arnej
  12. Intution – Marninx Pres Ecco

The pulse of a nation mix – Hospital mix

The pulse of a nation mix by cubicgarden

I had a listen to all of my mixes I recorded while in Hospital, and this is certainly the best mix of them all.

This one is certainly the best sounding of the bunch which includes the the amazing recover mix, the outta of hope mix and of course the pulse of a nation mix. Its a good length too at almost a hour long. The mixing isn’t perfect but its good enough for a listen. The choice of tunes is also good, a nice upbeat selection, I must have had a good day the day I recorded this mix. As always enjoy it… oh an you can directly download this mix using this link.

  1. By your side (martin roth remix) – the thrillseekers feat gina do
  2. Strange bends (kyau vs albert) – Sebastian Sand
  3. Grooveline (matt darey) – Blockster
  4. dark side of the moon (marc van linden remix) – Ernesto vs Bastian
  5. Intution (martin roth remix) – Marninx pres ecco
  6. the truth (david west remix) – Headstrong feat Tiff Lacey
  7. Circa Forever (R.E.mix) – Rapid eye
  8. The wave (svenson & gielen remix) – cosmic gate
  9. a new dawn (virtual vault remix) – steve forte rio
  10. So much – Vince Nysse
  11. Ultracurve – cosmic gate

Pacemaker + Sonodrome devices better explained

how pacemaker and sonodrome device can work

I thought I was pretty straight forward with my thoughts about using sonodrome devices with the pacemaker but some people did ask for a clearer description, the picture above this should be all you need.

So instead of plugging the Pacemaker straight into a amp, you plug the line out into the input of a your Sonodrome box. The Sonodrome box can be anything you want to build, I really want to build a Flanger Effect box on my first go, something I love playing with when djing but is sadly lacking from the pacemaker right now. Once you attach the output of the Sonodrome box to the Amp your away pretty much. I know you can buy effect peddles which do the same thing but there usually so heavy, made for bands, use external power and look like crap. What I would build would be unfussy, simple and small enough to throw in the bag alongside the pacemaker for live events.

A couple words of warning however.

The Sonodrome box, needs to deliver totally clean sound when not in use, because un/plugging it mid set would be a nightmare. So no amplification at 0 I guess. The Box should aid that feeling of movement, so big fat buttons and the like. They also need to be pretty solid when mounted, as there expected to get quite a lot of abuse.

There’s also some advantages to this type of setup, like taking a 3.5inch stereo jack on the input but having a selectable 5.5inch jack or even a XLR on the output. The projects seem pretty straight easy to follow. The one idea which really interests me a lot is the wiimote one. With bluetooth and a few selectable effects it should be straight forward to farm all the changes to the accelerometers on a wiimote instead. Although I can kind of imagine how it would work, I have no idea how much work it would take, maybe I’d be better asking someone to build it for me and paying them instead. Any takers?

Digital Djing finds its niche? Welcome the Pacemaker

Pacemaker

Ok I saw this for the first time on the Gadget Show of all places the other day. They only showed it briefly but in that short 2mins I was blown away.

The Pacemaker is simply a digital mpeg3 mixer in portable form. In actually fact its dual mpeg3 players with a koas pad and mini mixer in one portable little unit. Simply amazing… what kills me is this device seems so perfect. Maybe this is the future of digital mixing? Finally something to separate the analogue djs from the true digital djs. The only thing which could make this device better is a drop in price, a real time waveform display, bluetooth 2.0 audio/input support and some tactile feedback.

Anyway enough chatter, go to the site and check it out. I'm number 2157 2738 in the queue for this amazing device.

Your queue number is No. 2738

This pre-booking is a non-binding reservation that guarantees you a specified place in line. To convert your pre-booking to a mutually binding order, we shall require delivery address information and full payment.

Your pre-booking includes the Pacemaker 120 GB pocket-size DJ system, line-out/RCA cable, power adapter, USB cable and quick user guide.

The price is 520 Euro, plus taxes and shipping costs. First shipments are scheduled for February 2008.

Before delivery, we will contact you with a request of delivery address details and final payment. Should you wish not to proceed with this purchase, your pre-booking will be cancelled and your queue number will be lost.

To view your queue number and booking status, log in at the Pre-booking section on www.Pacemaker.net

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