hey vince,
yeah that was me heh
still looking to see if i could add automation to the lilo at reasonable pricepoint. may have found a solution but its gonna take some time. the solution is midi-based. you would use midi from daw to control faders. (but also user could adjust in real time). vince said the lilo chasis is plenty big for dropping in motor faders.
the concept is this. there are some diy-ers who put together a pretty configurable midicontroller out there using PIC microcontroller from Microchip. its essentially a non-commercial module based midi controller design that consists of a core module and and many add on modules. here is the website:
http://www.ucapps.de/
pcb and kits are avail in us at:
http://avi.dezines.com/mbhp/buy.html
as you can see the prices are reasonable and NON PROFIT
there is a motor fader add on module. each core unit can drive 1 motor fader module which controls 8 motorfaders. (so for the lilo you would need to build 3 units to drive all 17 faders). prefab'd pcbs are available at cost for all modules. all parts are pretty cheap and avail at mouser/digikey . they seem to have qualified 2 different faders for use with the unit:
ALPS
RSAON11M9
PANASONIC
EVANMKP08B14
panasonic unit is only $7 or a piece and silent but doesnt have a touch sensitiivty option. however this is easy to work around. (a switch or thumbtack solves this)
however, it looks like there are issues with the current design getting consistency across all faders(probably voltage regulation) and also having them run noiseless. many other faders dont seem to work well with the system. it seems pretty testy. they added a new adjustable pulsewidth modulation option to help with the noise factor. i contacted someone to get prices for the alps fader today.
the parts for pcb for 3 modules wouldnt run much more than 150.00. box/power supply another 50.00. then not sure how much the faders go for. i think the alps go for 25-40 a pop. essentially you may be able to add automation for under $1000.00(thats all 17 faders. 8 faders or so would cut in half). if you could get these thing up and running i dont see what could mess with the speck and moving faders stike
i, myself, am going to try to build a simple 8 fader system soon to see how well it works. if i am successful vince will be getting a phone call the next day for a new order thumbsup .
electric