MultitrackStudio multitrack recording software: What's New in Version 8.4. ??? Jumpstart Dumper ????.

The previous series of articles on this Robocommunity site on establishing a way to drive the Elvis Alive bust from a PC are useful but it becomes a peripheral which can do nothing without being attached to a PC with what amounts to a RS-232 umbilical. This also loads down the PC such that running any other other processes could affect the playback of the animation sequences. What I plan to do in the next three articles are to make the 'PC Elvis' more like the Elvis Alive bust, only better! Unfortunately the Elvis Alive personality is removed in the process but then there are so many other personalities waiting to come out!

Improvements To the Original Hack The goals to be achieved with this upgrade are as follows • Still maintain the capability for a PC to send the individual animation commands via the RS-232 link. This will still be used as before to create animation sequences. • Add the new capability to have the microcontroller drive its own movements and play its own audio, triggered by a single command on the RS-232 link. This opens the door to allow the PC to function as a higher level 'brain' that monitors the surroundings and then triggers the sequences.

No loading of the PC occurs just to drive the audio and the movements which is also better for driving multiple Elvis busts from the same PC. • Add a wireless link between the PC and the Elvis bust to send the sequence trigger commands. This is also better for driving multiple Elvis busts since there can be multiple receivers for a single transmitter with no other special interface design involved. • Provide a standalone wireless remote control with some programable customization for triggering sequences on up to 16 Elvis busts.

• Allow a unique optional capability to connect the remote control to the PC to trigger sequences from audio files. This allows the Elvis busts to do things like announce the arrival of email, insult you when you make errors, or event assist you during a Power Point presentation. The first step to achieve these goals requires a small but not very cheap module (~$40) called a VMUSIC2. Member Retroplayer on this forum recommmended this module to me and has an excellent Instructables article on the module. The link for it is: (Thanks Retroplayer!). In short, the VMUSIC2 module will do the following. • Plays back MP3 audio files from a USB flash drive (at least a 4GB size is supported).