Almost there. Two of the new USB 3.0 cards arrived Tuesday and I installed them immediately. It's so much nicer having cards that fit properly. Two more arrived yesterday--I will install them tonight.

Since I still had some left money in my 'new computer' fund, I spent most of the remainder on a new graphic card, an Asus GTX 970 Mini. Hopefully, this will extend the usefulness of my five year old PC for another year or two. The power supply doesn't have an 8-pin connector though so now I'm waiting on a 6- to 8-pin adapter cable to arrive. I've actually been content with my current GTX 460 for tracking in iPi Mocap Studio, but I noticed that iClone recommends a more recent series video card for best performance. Also, the upgrade means I can finally use Octane properly.

Slowly but surely, it's coming together. I just hope all these new toys don't become too much of a 'distraction' from actually getting the music video finished this year. :)

Will post again with pictures once I have everything up and running.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

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Good, can't wait to see it.

I had an old Dell 531 with a dual-core Athon in it and I pulled it out, upgraded from Vista to Win 7 Ult., then to Windows 10 and surprisingly it all went well.

iPi says a dual-core Athlon 2.10G processor should work, I bumped the Memory to 4G also. (I'll see).

I did upgrade the old drive to a 1T WD HDD for storage and faster, installed the USB 3.0 controller and it's all operating.

Thing is I had to upgrade the video card (ordered will arrive soon) to handle the Kinect with Direct x11, but the drivers for it loaded fine. (I hope I don't have to flash the BIOS for upgrade, I am reading it is a pain).

Hooked it up direct wired to router and tested slave and master with one PS Eye on it and it connected, but without video card it wouldn't record, but it did work fine, I had to disable the firewall on both machines, just to test faster, but will try to see if I can port it properly with firewalls on later.

I think I am just going to buy a longer Cat5 cable and run it that way anyway, just set it up on a small table on that end of room, as that is all that comp will really be used for, no other programs, other than basic IE, virus protection and Kinect/iPi recorder on it, well and whatever Apps Windows 10 has, but I removed a lot of those also, no use for them to me...ever.

Once I get everything set up (looks like next week at this point) I will repost on it.

At least if nothing else, I turned an old Dell 531 into a useable Windows 10 machine again very cheap :)

Total cost was just $12 for new memory sticks and the video card at $50. I hope 900Mhz will work to record with, I am thinking it should be, I had to get the low profile card to work with the USB 3.0 adapter, with whole machine I was limited to what upgrades could be made easily.

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Yes, that's where I am right now. I didn't really want to put money into the computer because it's so old, plus I thought my upgrade options were more limited than it turned out. I hope the new graphics card works out because with all the recent spending, it doesn't look like I'll be getting a new computer any time soon. :)

My only concern now is the power supply. I thought I had upgraded it when I got my current graphics card but I'm not 100% sure about it. Guess I better check tonight.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

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The way video cards are made today, they don't need much power for performance, so if it's 500w or close for that card, you should be fine I would think.

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Good news is a properly configured Firewall on both my machines works properly. (set for only Domain and Private).

Received second cam yesterday and tested on main machine and it works perfect.

Still waiting on other components (VC and RAM) and hope the Dual Core 2.1GHz processor will handle the camera, MS requirements states min. of Dual Core 3.1GHz processor.

I messaged iPi to see if they tested the cam with an Athlon Dual Core 2.1GHz processor, maybe I will hear back with a confirmation they have tested it with the Docs saying min. being an Athlon Dual Core 2.0Ghz processor.

Upgrade to 6000+ 3.1Ghz processor is cheap, but can only buy used at this point and will probably cause a BIOS flash update, so I hope I can avoid it.

I am trying to use an older VGA monitor, (not 1080p), so I hope it works at the highest resolution settings I can use on it, since the iPi Recorder resolution using depth only is 512 x 424.

I do have a question for iPi: Docs say add all device selections to slave, I guess this means Move controllers also, so a BT dongle paired through MotioninJoy would also be needed on any slave computers used?

I have a feeling this is necessary, good thing I found and purchased 2 extra ASUS BT-211 and went ahead an installed and paired the Moves on the slave PC.

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I think you were confused by this section. It only states that you need to connect your devices to appropriate PCs before recording and do all necessary steps within iPi Recorder:

• Select devices on home screen, proceed to recording
• Make settings on Setup tab
• Evaluate background

Each recording device should be connected to a single PC only - either master or slave. You may connect all PS Moves to the master, or all to the slave, or split between them.

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Ok, it did throw me saying for each computer "Attach all designated devices", as a Move controller is a device that I would be using during recording and since it will be a separate video file, I just figured it needed the Moves data with that camera as well.

I added the Moves to the slave computer anyway, I just don't need to add them or select them on the slave before recording, or I can split a selected Move to the slave, gotcha.

Thanks for replying.

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I was wondering if I could just run a remote desktop connection to the other computer and run all setup from the Master...

That way I wouldn't even need to use the VGA monitor on the other computer for setup.

So, I tested that theory and unless I have something wrong, I had to turn off the firewall on the remote machine to use remote connection, (I have Vipre Security on that machine and its firewall exceptions are weird to set up, so need to find out why I need it turned off), but when I do that the Master machine through iPi Recorder won't connect to the same machine remotely with the firewall turned off, (it wouldn't connect that way). or while connected, but...

I can however set everything up from the Master and then disconnect from the remote machine, log back in on that machine and the recorder is still running fine, so in theory, since I have that in slave mode, I don't really need to do anything else on that machine, (I won't know until I get that machine finished upgraded), but sounds good :)

I think other users have done this also, so it probably works as long as you disconnect from the remote session.

Just something I am trying while waiting on parts, I don't really need to do that, since my machines are right near one another, (Just wanted to setup on HD monitor), but may be helpful to someone else in a different scenario.

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I setup my firewall on slave machine correctly so I could remotely connect to it with firewall on and I was able to run both recorders from the Master, (never even opened the recorder from the slave machine), set each up, run background eval., then entered slave mode and connect to slave all from Master and I never had to disconnect from the remote connection, just minimized the slaves window to run the recording from the Master.

All from the Master, I set the one recorder to enter slave, I didn't have to touch that again, just minimized the window and hit record/stop on the Master.

Master had 5 PS Eyes on it and slave had 1 on it, all recorded at 60 fps and when done it auto-merged them to one video file on the Master, but also kept the master and slave files as separate files in the same Master machines folder.

File replayed perfect in the recorder playback without frame drops.

I didn't try this test with the Move controllers selected, but I will.

This was done without any of the upgrades to the weaker machine yet and on that machine alone the PS Eye was running at less than 50fps (fluctuated) until I entered it as the slave and then it went right up to 60 fps and stayed throughout the recording of approx. 20 seconds.

Pretty darn cool I could run everything from one computer remotely with the PS Eyes that way, I hope it works the same with the Kinects once all upgrades are finished.

I will test it more with the Moves attached, just to be sure it runs consistently that way and post the results and possibly a video showing both on the one Master machine and the video output replay.

These are just tests and I am not sure it will work consistently without errors, or the same for everyone, but I just recorded several times back to back and each worked fine so far.

This will only work for 2 machines this specific way of course, but that is all I have and need to run on.

Someone may be able to remotely connect to each machine separately, (one at a time from the Master), and set it up and enter it into slave mode, if more than 2 are used, and it work similarly if it would be convenient, I just can't test that out.

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I do that with a small laptop running Team Viewer and wifi. It works well when I'm working by myself and I don't want to keep running out of the room to operate the workstation. Team Viewer is super easy to set up and very responsive--for general operation, I rarely see much lag with it. And it connects with any other computer on our network. In the past, I've even used it to monitor and manage projects from other locations.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!