PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Hi,

I was thinking of getting a (or two) Mimo 7" screen for the purpose of a dedicated meterbridge for Scope. Any advice or first hand experience is welcome.

See:
http://www.mimomonitors.com/
and
http://createdigitalmotion.com/2009/07/ ... erm-value/

Something like this

good idea....
hmmmmmm.....

Greg

800 pixels is not enough for the stock meter bridges.

Indeed, was just making a screenshot and u beat me to posting. Still...for reference:

The monitor itself isn't terribly bright, but in a dimly lit studio it should be usable.

Also I would have a look at the cpu load for running things on it, considering that it's USB 2.0 (cpu driven connection).

I think at some point there was a 3rd party self-contained meter bridge (only) somewhere.
That may work.

Greg

The mixer fits WITHOUT the meter bridge

However I'm sure other uses can be found, and having the rapidly updating portions of Scope's UI on a usb based 'graphics card' + monitor makes me wonder what its load on the system will be (servicing the IRQ, handling the PIO for the serial mode usb which is all cpu bound, calculating the onscreen display, etc)

Two meterbridges would partially fit so that 2 x 26 channels of metering can be visible. I don't know if my 3 GHz P4 can handle more CPU load because it is reaching its limits.

I would not use one of those on a DAW, they eat up CPU like crazy, and a lot of USB shenanigans.
You are basically emulating an entire video card in software, and THEN sending the output VIA asynchronous USB over your computers bus, and if you have a P4 that could be quite a hit.

most video cards have 2 monitor outs, if you are using both, maybe you have a TV out on your video card and you could use a cheap LCD TV
or just get a cheapo second video card and monitor (even a PCI one would be fine for that, and still better then USB.)

Neutron wrote:I would not use one of those on a DAW, they eat up CPU like crazy, and a lot of USB shenanigans.
You are basically emulating an entire video card in software, and THEN sending the output VIA asynchronous USB over your computers bus, and if you have a P4 that could be quite a hit.

most video cards have 2 monitor outs, if you are using both, maybe you have a TV out on your video card and you could use a cheap LCD TV
or just get a cheapo second video card and monitor (even a PCI one would be fine for that, and still better then USB.)

Agreed. Good idea. Some of the older video cards still have VGA output that can go to cheap monitors.

Greg

Neutron wrote:I would not use one of those on a DAW, they eat up CPU like crazy, and a lot of USB shenanigans.
You are basically emulating an entire video card in software, and THEN sending the output VIA asynchronous USB over your computers bus, and if you have a P4 that could be quite a hit.

most video cards have 2 monitor outs, if you are using both, maybe you have a TV out on your video card and you could use a cheap LCD TV
or just get a cheapo second video card and monitor (even a PCI one would be fine for that, and still better then USB.)

Pretty much what I was thinking, cpu load even on a modern machine may not be worth it (even with multiple cores servicing the interrupts for the USB connection will eat system bus bandwidth like crazy.)

I agree about the 'cheap' LCD direction (except I'd skip the TV options due to horribly fuzzy picture). I've seen plenty of LCD's 1440x900 resolution on up going for $100-150 USD in the 'daily deals' type emails from technology vendors here in the US (Newegg, Zipzoomfly, microwarehouse & even amazon.com.) Just a question of keeping an eye on things and watching for specials & overstocks. I've actually bought 2 24" LCD's in the last year for under $200 each. 1 was a Westinghouse 'floor model' from Costco which I got for 50% of the sticker price due to no box etc, and the other was an Acer vw246h which was in a newegg deal for $30 off the $220 price ($190, and free shipping.) The westinghouse is more 'solidly' built and had 0 bad pixels, and I've seen it at Microwarehouse for not too much more than I paid new. The Acer has a few bad pixels, but since I've got a few samsungs here that I use for my 'main' monitors (and color critical work) I'm not really bothered about a bad pixel or two on a budget monitor.

In short, for the cost of that thing you can find a retail/bargain LCD with more desktop and a normal vga/dvi connection.

Thanks for the insight. I think I'm gonna skip this one.