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Motion Control Round-up |
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| Dear Reader, |
 For a lot of people, this is their favorite time of year. The weather has mostly settled down and we're all getting ready to celebrate the traditions of Halloween. Whether it's costumes and candy or ghostly parties, it is a time to have some fun and let loose a little bit.
Whatever your traditions this time of year, go enjoy them. Carve a pumpkin, make up some scary punch for a party or put together your best costume ever and as always, be safe. |
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Frankencoder |
 In popular interpretations of the novel "Frankenstein" Victor Frankenstein creates life by combining all the elements of a human: large stature, strength, intelligence and animating it through the power of electricity.
We invite you to a similar undertaking. Our encoders allow you to combine all the best elements to end up with the perfect encoder for your application. Connector options, output type, mounting configuration, resolutions - pick the features you like and through the power of electricity it will do your bidding.
The process is simple. Just read the model ordering block at the bottom of the product page from left to right, filling in the blanks as you go. Don't worry if you have questions, just call our applications desk and a trusty assistant (perhaps even named Igor) will help you. Once you are done, place your order and soon a real live encoder will appear on your loading dock ready to follow your every command.
To experience your own "life creation" process, just click on the picture at the top of this article to take a look at our catalog and build one for yourself. |
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| Funny Guy |
 Most of you will instantly recognize the face of John Candy to the left. Famously funny for his various movie roles, he also fits into this month's Halloween theme as he was born on October 31st.
I usually provide some quotes, but John's movie and television work is full of his clever wit - which pales next to the written word. Nonetheless for all his public exposure there are a lot of fun facts and figures about the man that I'll bet most of you didn't know about. So here's the "John Candy Trivia Fest". When you're finished, you can click on his picture where you will be transported to a mini-biography and a filmography for your continued reading enjoyment.
In May 2006, John Candy became one of the first four entertainers to ever be honored by Canada Post and was featured on a postage stamp.
John had his own TV cartoon show called Camp Candy and, in 1989, his own weekly radio show called Radio Kandy.
In the summer of 1985, John was chosen as one of Playgirl magazine's ten sexiest men. The editor wrote, "The shaggy moptop, dimpled cheeks, physical grace - nobody is sexier than this giant of comedy who turns us on with good humor."
John's father, Sidney Candy, died of a heart attack at age 35 when John was five years old. The same ailment that caused John's demise.
In the movie Ghostbusters the role of Louis Tully, played by Rick Moranis, was originally written for John Candy.
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Can You Solve This? |
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 Some applications stories are more fun than others. This one was certainly intriguing and gave us a our "15 seconds of fame". In this case, the application requirement was for a special effect that required operation of a movie camera mounted on a race car. That part was fine - the tricky part was that the control for the camera was to be mounted remotely with the image fed from the camera to an operator who would manipulate the camera angles on the fly in real time while the race car was traveling 70 miles per hour through a field. Not exactly a piece-of-cake application. Oh and by the way, they had already tried to do this whole trick through a wireless connection and found that it didn't have the bandwidth for the task. What to do?
Answer: It turns out that the clue is in the last sentence in the phrase "didn't have the bandwidth." Most wireless sensor systems available are intended for measuring or monitoring applications - not for real-time control. However, the Swiftcomm wireless sensor interface is unique in that it really is intended for the high speed and reliability requirements of real-time feedback and control. With an update rate of more than 1,000 times a second, frequency hopping protocols to reduce stray radio interference and a patented algorithm to ensure smooth data flow even with broken links, the Swiftcomm interface was up to the task. Once installed, it worked flawlessly and gave an Oscar-worthy performance!
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The Big Ones |
 We're all pretty familiar with the tradition of carving gourds, particularly pumpkins, to make Jack O' Lanterns as part of the Halloween holiday. With many pastimes, there are always those who are willing to go a little farther, push the envelope, and really make their mark in a bigger way. So it is as the lowly pumpkin is elevated to museum status by the practitioners of Giant Pumpkin Carving.
You can see one fine example in the picture to the left. It looks like a pretty accomplished bit of fairly standard pumpkin carving until you realize that it weighs over 250 pounds. If you now take into account the size of the hay bale that it is sitting on, you'll realize that this pumpkin it is about two feet wide - and this is one of the smaller ones. Click on the picture and it will take you to a gallery of really big pumpkin carvings, some that are well over 1,000 pounds. Now that's a lot of pumpkin pie! | |
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| I hope you enjoyed the Halloween themed newsletter this month. If there is anything that we can do to help take a little of the "fright" out of your control systems, give us a call or an email and we'll do our best to eliminate the "demons". |
Thanks for reading,
Scott Orlosky
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