The first Dexter packages shipped today

Wow, shipping these things out is a ton of work.

I finally got the first Dexter packages shipped out today.

Dexter shipping update

Dexter boards continue to be soldered by my army of solder soldiers.  I think we probably have about 60 boards done at the moment.

I didn't end up shipping anything on Saturday.  I spent the time trying to redo my Dragon's Lair laserdisc image capture to make it perfect since it is about to go into the hands of a lot of people.  I ended up with a result that I was really happy with, but someone who tested it complained that the audio was lagging behind the video.  So I am going to look into this before I ship anything out.  My new shipping estimate is that I will start shipping on Tuesday (Apr 26).

Sorry for the delay and I am passionate about delivering an astoundingly awesome product.

Control Sony LDP-1450 right from a term program

I am posting this here so that I can personally come back and refer to it later :)

Since I don't have a remote control for my Sony LDP-1450 (if they even make one), the only way to give it commands is through the serial port.

Using a term program such as "Tera Term Pro", one can easily issue seek and play commands to the player using regular ASCII.

To issue a search command to, for example, frame 12345: C12345@

To issue a play forward at 1X command:   :

To play backward at 1X: J

To query current frame number: `

To start a REPEAT loop (2 iterations) from an arbitrary frame to dest frame 12345: D12345@2@

To pause the disc: O

To turn on index (ie frame overlay and more) : P

To clear all: V

To play forward at 1/5X :   <

To still step forward: +   (backward is , )

Dexter boards are here! (video)

Here's more video than you ever wanted to see about me opening up (and soldering) the Dexter boards that just arrived.

Merlin-Dx update

I saw over on KLOV that people are excited for Shaun to release Merlin-Dx (Merlin for Dexter).

Just so everyone knows, Shaun is on top of things, but I am the one dragging him down.  I've been prioritizing resolving Paypal issues and shipping Dexter over doing my part to get Merlin-Dx ready for release.  Shaun can't release until I add some stuff to the Dexter firmware (free update, can be done over the internet).  So if you want to hassle anyone about Merlin-Dx being delayed, you can hassle me.  I _will_ get this done, so don't worry.  But it may be after you receive your Dexter unit.  Like I said, Dexter can be updated over the internet and all updates are free, so you don't need to worry if I ship your Dexter before I have my Merlin changes done.

First batch of Dexter boards have arrived!!!

I filmed a blog video update but have chosen to spend my time working toward shipping Dexter rather than uploading blog videos so there isn't much to say except...

the first batch of Dexter boards has arrived!!!!  And they look _awesome_ :) :) :)

I had some success trying to get the audio from a Firefox laserdisc capture synced up to the video (which is actually a surprisingly hard problem to solve).

Tony M. Victorino tries out Dexter (with instant searches enabled)

Due to a bug, Tony M. Victorino managed to get Dexter's instant search feature enabled unexpectedly.  It looks really good on DL2E in my opinion.

New Dexter update (more robust on unexpected error)

I've pushed out an update via Dexter Manager that makes Dexter more robust for an arcade/production environment.  In the past, if Dexter crashed, it would pop up an unhelpful error message and one would have to power cycle it.  Not good!  This was always just a temporary measure while I worked on other features.  Now I've changed it so if Dexter crashes, it will write a log file to the USB drive and then restart itself.

FYI, Dexter crashes are extremely rare, so rare that I can't get it to happen.  But it does happen occasionally to other people so now instead of shrugging helplessly, I can have them send me their log files to help troubleshoot.  Win/win.  And since it auto-restarts, no one will have to manually power cycle the thing anymore.

Incremental improvements.. :)

Everyone who was refunded for Dexter should now have been re-billed

If you received a Paypal refund from me for Dexter, you should have now received a new email from me along with a new invoice to pay using iTransact (my new paypal alternative).

If you haven't received a new invoice from me, you may want to contact me to get this taken care of.  I want to make sure that everyone gets their orders in a timely manner.