Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I have a friend who is going crazy with Android development and has considered doing remote interfaces for photography...any interest? I have the CC setup, and although it is amazing stuff, the teeny display is tough on the old eyes....don't know what it would take but figure Gary could figure it out with you guys.

http://www.scorelackey.com/index.html

And he is pretty darn good photographer too...

Thansk for the suggestion, however we are not looking to employ cell phones as control deices for our lights. Doing so would require additional investment in hardware (recievers) to achieve. Add to this, relying on another third party programmer(s) programming for a fourth party platform any of which (likely or not) could collapse next year, or tomorrow. Any devices made by us and used for our light control will be self contained.

I would love to see a bigger version of the Cyber Commander and a touch screen device for control seems like it would be ideal. The screen and controls on the current CC are just too small for me. I seldom use it.

What I think would be an ideal product is a device that 'talks' to CyberSyncs and WiFi. This way people could write computer or iPad apps to control the lights via WiFi and this device would relay the commands/data to the CyberSyncs. Use an on-camera CST to trigger the lights. Apps could also be written for Android products or any other device that has WiFi. This device would allow for the greatest flexibility in controlling your studio as new apps are developed for various devices.

A USB device that talks to the CyberSyncs would be cool in lieu of the WiFi device above. This would allow control by a computer program or possibly an iPad app (with the iPod Camera Connection Kit providing the USB interface or a special iPad cable or plug). This device could be powered by the USB port.

Please tell me something like this is in development! 8-)

-fg

It'd chew up batteries on wifi unfortunately (imagine the cybercommander w/ wifi only lasting a day)...

Still would be nice if the CC had built-in wifi...that way, it'd be self-contained but *also* expandable. Elinchrom seems to be trying to do this w/ their USB iphone UI...should be interesting to watch them hit the bleeding edge :-)

This device would not have to be battery powered for use in the studio. It would just need to be in the room and in range of your strobes and a power outlet. It simply acts like a WiFi to CyberSync translator for setup control only. A CST on your camera would trigger the flash.

But alas, this discussion is moot.

As requested before, a USB cybersync transceiver with an open API will be great.
Can be based on a CSRB+ with a USB chip to talk to the CSRB+ uc.

Then you can be sure that you will see many developers develop smart app for all kind of devices.

I agree, this would be my second choice only because it must be tethered to the computer or other device. This would rule out apps for smart phones and may even require jail-breaking an iPad if Apple deems they don't want to support it in IOS.

That's the beauty of a WiFi to CyberSync translator (with open API), apps could be developed for any device that supports WiFi and it would be wireless. This opens the doors to many handheld and tablet devices. And it's not like WiFi is going away anytime soon.

I would immediately develop an iPad app with the help of a couple of friends, all owners of PCBuff products. I'm certain app developers for other devices would jump on the bandwagon if there's a chance to make a few extra $$$.

This would be so convenient that I'm halfway thinking about opening up my CyberCommander to see what it would take to glue on a WiFi chipset and reverse engineer some software. :twisted:

I wouldn't like to see a wifi in a Cybersync system as you will introduce RFI problem. Don't forget that the Cybersync is using the 2.4 GHz band too. You will also need to develop a specific hardware to make a passthrough protocol conversion... A lot of dev time and expense (may also need another FCC expensive testing) for a product that will only be sold for a few units.

On the other hand a serial or USB device would need minimum dev time and can be based on existing products.

I wouldn't mind a larger model of the CC that's a bit easier to see and manipulate. However, otherwise you're really only talking about a method to control the lighting setup on a computer...and that's already been done, years and years ago. By Buff, no less, as well as some others.

There is only a very, very tiny market for that capability. Buff has provided the capability to a great degree in the current CC (I wonder how many people are actually using it to anything like it's full potential--I can't claim to be).

It's probably possible--probably easy--to interpret the setup that the CC writes to the card and develop a computer or smartphone app that can write the same information, then connect that through the microusb port to the CC. But that would have to be for someone else to do.