THE BENEFITS OF SPICE AUTOMATION
Many systems can handle slide projectors. Add special effects and the field narrows. Video shrinks it further. By the time you get to star projector automation (we've done machines by Zeiss, Minolta, Goto, and Evans & Sutherland) there aren't many companies left.
Do you give live shows with pre-programmed sequences? Is rapid access to visuals for Q&A important? Do you need to run taped shows repeatedly with minimal staff? SPICE Automation handles these scenarios, and many others.
SPICE Automation was developed by people who know planetaria. We've sat in the producer's seat and programmed lots of shows ourselves.
Spending a lot of money on a system, only to find that it's obsolete a month later, is no fun. In our system new features come with software updates.
Have you ever crawled on your belly through a filthy cove 12 feet in the air, just to install new memory chips in some controllers? We have. So our controllers come with bi-directional communication capabilities built-in. Instead of memory chips, which must be pried off a circuit board and replaced, we use rewritable chips which can be downloaded with new code from the comfort and convenience of the central host computer. Your clothes will thank you.
Yes, you'll enjoy elevated status among your peers with SPICE Automation... but we're talking about device status, something SPICE Automation attends to by itself. As you scroll through a cuefile (while editing a show, for example), all devices attached to the system remain in sync. Slide trays, laserdiscs, and video tapes cue to the correct frames. Star projector axes spin to the proper angles. You don't have to keep resetting everything. And an unplugged slide projector will catch up as soon as you plug it back in. Now that's status!
Send a "6 second fade to 80%" cue to a slide projector and it fades up. Send the same cue to a multisync video projector and it fades up the same way. The cues you type are identical. SPICE Automation does the hard part, translating cues into the control protocol required by the device. This work is done by device drivers, software programs imbedded inside our controllers. We work very hard to perfect our drivers, and we're always coming up with new ones, expanding the universe of devices controlled by the system.
More cutting-edge planetaria use SPICE Automation than any other system. When you join the list you'll be able to easily exchange programs and duplicate effects unattainable elsewhere.
If you have a question or a problem, you won't wait long for help. We have full-time customer support engineers on staff, and we answer the phone right away.
Somebody asked us recently "how often projectors flicker because of line noise" with our system. They were shocked when we answered "Never." Our engineers are fanatics about this sort of thing. The show must go on, and with SPICE Automation it does!