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On 9/28/2018 at 10:15 PM, Andrew Jones said:

Well I don't know about these other Chinese brands you talk about but we only have 1 website.... www..DeityMic.com and its a global site that I created based in Los Angeles. So if its on our one and only site, you can trust it. 😀

 

 

My apologies if I am wrong. When I saw a Deity Mic 2 review I searched out of curiosity and there was some website confusion between Aputureshop.eu and eu.aputure.com. I presume Aputureshop is a dealer, and that reminded me of some Chinese osciloscope manufacturers whose dealers are allowed to create domains that really look like it's the manufacturer. None of the two European websites seemed to have version 2 of the microphone at that time anyway.

 

So how does it manage to work despite the horrible pollution on 2.4 GHz? ;) (Just curious).

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4 hours ago, Andrew Jones said:

 

Check out a website I wrote that breaks it down. https://www.deitymic.com/wirelesstech/

Interesting read. I assume all the spectrum analysis is discrete and there is no way of knowing how hard the system is working to maintain an optimal signal?  Would a user even benefit from having a window on whats happening under the hood? - are there settings for the user to choose that may improve performance in a given set of circumstances? EG a display shows the system is recording lots of 'bad time slots' and we choose another 'channel'. Am I right in thinking the word 'channel' as we understand it from non frequency hopping systems is more a nominal concept (in a frequency hopping system) as there is no frequency (channel?) to change to that will make things better because the system is doing this already?

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sure sounds like a clever concept.

what I am wondering is what happens when more and more devices try to be clever and hop frequencies/channels all the time. I imagine we run into problems as all devices think  "hey, there's some free bandwidth over there" and hop around to the same spot simultaneously.

could be that by that time everything runs on short synchronised nano second pulses anyway though...

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43 minutes ago, chrismedr said:

sure sounds like a clever concept.

what I am wondering is what happens when more and more devices try to be clever and hop frequencies/channels all the time. I imagine we run into problems as all devices think  "hey, there's some free bandwidth over there" and hop around to the same spot simultaneously.

could be that by that time everything runs on short synchronised nano second pulses anyway though...

 

The nice thing about spread spectrum is that several users may share the same band and, at most, each user will only perceive a higher noise floor. Although miracles don't exist it can look like magic.

 

The trick is as simple as adding some randomness to the frequency decision process so that two units won't follow the same predictable sequence. 

 

Now I'm really curious to see these working!

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2 hours ago, borjam said:

The trick is as simple as adding some randomness to the frequency decision process so that two units won't follow the same predictable sequence. 

 

well, I meant also units from different manufacturers fighting over free bandwidth while switching randomly creating a lot of overhead.

but it probably still beats having static channel selection and allows for more efficient use of the spectrum, so I'm also curious to see how well it works and how it plays along with other devices.

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The best example of Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (although the slow variant) is mobile phones. Hundreds of phones can be connected to one cell tower and use a relatively small band but still can connect and get service. That is, per cell tower. Indeed with different towers next to eachother you can even increase the numbers by a lot (think festivals where thousands of people gather, they put up Ad hoc cell towers). So they technology quite solid actually.

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I’ll start getting really excited when they announce an IFB receiver (pleeeeease Andrew??). It’s a market that is sadly (and inexplicably) under-serviced. Our choices are: spend a little and get Comteks which sound like crap, or spend a lot and get Lectro/Zaxcom (more than you want to spend on wireless that gets dragged around scripty’s and PA’s). Or work around the pilot tone issue in Sennheiser Evo’s. 

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1 hour ago, Vincent R. said:

The best example of Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (although the slow variant) is mobile phones.

 

yeah, I imagine it will work pretty well (although the cellphone comparison doesn't exactly give me the best confidence since they all use a common documented standard and I still get a lot of dropouts pretty much everywhere)

 

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39 minutes ago, chrismedr said:

 

yeah, I imagine it will work pretty well (although the cellphone comparison doesn't exactly give me the best confidence since they all use a common documented standard and I still get a lot of dropouts pretty much everywhere)

 

you know what? that is most likely your phone's antenna, or lack of a proper antenna. 

 

Now, to get full circle to the Deity mics, since they have proper SMA connectors we can use a whole bunch of readily available 2.4 ghz outdoor antennae with insane performance, without even the need to use a active antenna amp. Even smaller ones for in the bag (like 30 cm high) can boost significantly. 

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6 hours ago, chrismedr said:

 

well, I meant also units from different manufacturers fighting over free bandwidth while switching randomly creating a lot of overhead.

but it probably still beats having static channel selection and allows for more efficient use of the spectrum, so I'm also curious to see how well it works and how it plays along with other devices.

 

Still there are tricks for that, like redundancy :) Given enough redundancy you can survive lots of those “collisions”.

 

4 hours ago, chrismedr said:

 

yeah, I imagine it will work pretty well (although the cellphone comparison doesn't exactly give me the best confidence since they all use a common documented standard and I still get a lot of dropouts pretty much everywhere)

 

 

Phone drop outs are a more extreme example. A combination of too many users per cell and, to make it worse, unpredictable workload. Mics are much better in that aspect. Not that a microphone will suddenly decide by itself to send HD video ;)

 

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1 hour ago, Rick Reineke said:

Most systems of this type can only have one TX, one Rx. So IFB use is pretty much out of the question for now too.

Not true, the Deity system will 'multicast' and an IFB system is on the roadmap for next year, as well as other transmitter/receiver units.

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On 10/1/2018 at 2:51 AM, daniel said:

Interesting read. I assume all the spectrum analysis is discrete and there is no way of knowing how hard the system is working to maintain an optimal signal?  Would a user even benefit from having a window on whats happening under the hood? - are there settings for the user to choose that may improve performance in a given set of circumstances? EG a display shows the system is recording lots of 'bad time slots' and we choose another 'channel'. Am I right in thinking the word 'channel' as we understand it from non frequency hopping systems is more a nominal concept (in a frequency hopping system) as there is no frequency (channel?) to change to that will make things better because the system is doing this already?

 

A display icon or meter or something that gives a a peak under the hood when it comes to hoping... wouldn't help you. The refresh rate on the OLED is far to slow to keep up with the hops or any kind of hardcore data you'd think you'd want. By the time we could show it on the OLED it would be roughly 20-25 hops out of date and you could potentially hopped onto the same frequencies and logged them to the history log 4-5 times depending on if its a core channel.  And as soon as we'd update the OLED, it too would just flicker as fast as the refresh rate could go because we'd be bouncing more info into that section of the screen. Any info we'd display would need to be so dumbed down that it'd be useless to the user and just clutter the home display. As for features we could add to help you improve quality... the system is designed to almost be like an AI program managing it all for you. There a balance between RF Background Noise and redundant transmission of packet, the best option to improve performance has already been given to the user, removable antenna and RF-Power Output. Its already a uniquely coded signal allowing it to sit on other frequencies being used by other coded signals, the goal for the user to get "max range/performance" is to catch the minimum amount of signal that still can be decoded. 

 

 We do have the ability to allow the users to update the firmware. So if we get a bunch of suggests asking for a certain feature, we can add it. We designed the system with plenty of DSP left unused for future development.  Something that may get added in the future (post release) might be a 2.4Ghz freq scanner menu that will allow you to perform a test transmission on all 18 possible channels and measure the signal loss but instead of kicking back a frequency scan chart it instead gives you the max number of transmitters you can operate safely in the area.

 

On 10/2/2018 at 6:02 AM, Ed Denton said:

I’ll start getting really excited when they announce an IFB receiver (pleeeeease Andrew??). It’s a market that is sadly (and inexplicably) under-serviced. Our choices are: spend a little and get Comteks which sound like crap, or spend a lot and get Lectro/Zaxcom (more than you want to spend on wireless that gets dragged around scripty’s and PA’s). Or work around the pilot tone issue in Sennheiser Evo’s. 

Start getting excited 😎

 

 

On 10/2/2018 at 9:02 AM, daniel said:

Can more than 1 RX be paired to a given TX?

 

Yes. The firmware we had at IBC was maybe only 70-80% finished. We rushed it to get something working for IBC. But we will have a multicast feature that you enable at the TX that allows for more than 1x RX to be paired with the transmitter.  

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On 10/3/2018 at 8:41 PM, Andrew Jones said:

 

A display icon or meter or something that gives a a peak under the hood when it comes to hoping... wouldn't help you. The refresh rate on the OLED is far to slow to keep up with the hops or any kind of hardcore data you'd think you'd want. By the time we could show it on the OLED it would be roughly 20-25 hops out of date and you could potentially hopped onto the same frequencies and logged them to the history log 4-5 times depending on if its a core channel.  And as soon as we'd update the OLED, it too would just flicker as fast as the refresh rate could go because we'd be bouncing more info into that section of the screen. Any info we'd display would need to be so dumbed down that it'd be useless to the user and just clutter the home display. As for features we could add to help you improve quality... the system is designed to almost be like an AI program managing it all for you. There a balance between RF Background Noise and redundant transmission of packet, the best option to improve performance has already been given to the user, removable antenna and RF-Power Output. Its already a uniquely coded signal allowing it to sit on other frequencies being used by other coded signals, the goal for the user to get "max range/performance" is to catch the minimum amount of signal that still can be decoded. 

 

 We do have the ability to allow the users to update the firmware. So if we get a bunch of suggests asking for a certain feature, we can add it. We designed the system with plenty of DSP left unused for future development.  Something that may get added in the future (post release) might be a 2.4Ghz freq scanner menu that will allow you to perform a test transmission on all 18 possible channels and measure the signal loss but instead of kicking back a frequency scan chart it instead gives you the max number of transmitters you can operate safely in the area.

 

Start getting excited 😎

 

 

Yes. The firmware we had at IBC was maybe only 70-80% finished. We rushed it to get something working for IBC. But we will have a multicast feature that you enable at the TX that allows for more than 1x RX to be paired with the transmitter.  

Thanks for the detailed reply. Can you describe the workflow when setting these up on the day?

With an analogue system I might scan with RX and/or a RF scanner and then choose frequencies from the same group to avoid IM. Once set-up, IF I don't need to change freqs, when I turn them off (for lunch etc) then on, TX-RX do not have to re-pair, we're online pretty quickly. Its certainly time consuming doing scans on analogue and after the scan, if something comes along which wasn't there during the scan, the first I know about it is the 'hit'. (So I'm saying it's not bad if the system takes a bit longer to boot if it's managing frequency and IM discretely and effectively).

If I've got 4 channels (belt packs), already paired to RX, if power cycled, how quickly do they come back online.

I do like the idea of a scan accurately informing me how many channels can be used in the circumstances (especially it is operating in a narrow spectrum) - much like the scan on analogue though, things change when you're rolling, capacity may be reduced temporarily, by the sounds of it, we wouldn't necessarily know. I hear your point about a meter not being useful. For users it's reassuring to see lights and bars telling you things are working as they should but more importantly it's even more useful to have someway to understand why something is not working. Eg would a very powerful Wifi network and/or being close to the router desensitize the deity system, if so, is there a way to help the user determine this etc.

When are these going to be available in EU/UK?

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On 10/5/2018 at 2:16 AM, daniel said:

 Can you describe the workflow when setting these up on the day?

With an analogue system I might scan with RX and/or a RF scanner and then choose frequencies from the same group to avoid IM. Once set-up, IF I don't need to change freqs, when I turn them off (for lunch etc) then on, TX-RX do not have to re-pair, we're online pretty quickly. Its certainly time consuming doing scans on analogue and after the scan, if something comes along which wasn't there during the scan, the first I know about it is the 'hit'. (So I'm saying it's not bad if the system takes a bit longer to boot if it's managing frequency and IM discretely and effectively).

If I've got 4 channels (belt packs), already paired to RX, if power cycled, how quickly do they come back online.

 

For users it's reassuring to see lights and bars telling you things are working as they should but more importantly it's even more useful to have someway to understand why something is not working. Eg would a very powerful Wifi network and/or being close to the router desensitize the deity system, if so, is there a way to help the user determine this etc.

 

When are these going to be available in EU/UK?

Workflow = Turn the units on. Done. Seriously, thats it. The system handles the rest.

 

Bootup time= Maybe 5 seconds? 

 

As for Worrying about "a very powerful Wifi network and/or being close to the router desensitize the deity system", Thats not a problem. Wifi Networks and routers are beta signals. They take pulsing cues form outside RF factors/signals and accommodate them. I.E. our signal tells them when they can pulse. So we aren't worried about WiFi protocol, no matter how powerful it is.

 

When is it going to be available? Q1 2019.

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2 hours ago, Andrew Jones said:

As for Worrying about "a very powerful Wifi network and/or being close to the router desensitize the deity system", Thats not a problem. Wifi Networks and routers are beta signals. They take pulsing cues form outside RF factors/signals and accommodate them. I.E. our signal tells them when they can pulse. So we aren't worried about WiFi protocol, no matter how powerful it is.

 

 

Naughty, so, really playing with the RTS/CTS mechanism :)

 

I can also imagine situations in which messing with the 2.4 GHz spectrum might get you in trouble. For example, shooting an interview in a place that makes a heavy usage of WiFi such as a hospital or even some industrial settings that make a heavy usage of wireless networks for inventory control, etc.

 

Now, speaking of desensitization. Does the receiver include sharp front end filtering? I have seen situations in which WiFi equipment was unable to work due to a relative powerful continuous carrier transmitted by a microwave motion detector. I know most nowadays work on 10 GHz, but this one was a powerful signal on 2.4.

 

I have also found issues with analog sound/video transmitters working on the 2.4 GHz band. At least the old ones I have found somewhere transmit old fashioned carriers with their sidebands. Screenshot attached from a really basic spectrum analyzer (a WiPry from Oscium)

 

I guess in many run and gun situations you can't properly RF-sanitize the environment, so such evil equipment could ruin your day.

 

 

 

PhilipsChannel3.PNG

Edited by borjam
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3 hours ago, borjam said:

I can also imagine situations in which messing with the 2.4 GHz spectrum might get you in trouble. For example, shooting an interview in a place that makes a heavy usage of WiFi such as a hospital or even some industrial settings that make a heavy usage of wireless networks for inventory control, etc.

You are not messing with the 2.4 spectrum. Adaptive freq hopping (frequency-hopping spread spectrum) is FCC an approved method, and the EU regulators are accepting it as well with a bit more clarification from the manufacturer. 

Check out this Guinness World Record, they used the same technology to fly 179 RC airplanes at the same time:
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2017/8/video-watch-179-rc-model-aircraft-flying-at-the-same-time-485624

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13 minutes ago, IronFilm said:


So we can have 179 channels of Deity wireless at once? 😉

No, because the needed bandwidth is higher/wider for uncompressed audio streams. My example is just to illustrate the capabilities. 
Because the Deity system uses 8-FSK to modulate, it will degrease the need of bandwidth per channel (3.8 mhz @ 5mb/s vs 22mhz per channel for "regular" wifi).
In practice this means that theoretically one can use 18 systems together (36 channels of audio) but recommendation is to keep it to 3/4 systems (6/8 audio channels) for reliability, because we probably will use it in a bag thus the receivers will be close together.

 

correction: it is actually 4 mhz per channel, for some overhead and back and forth data transmission, like accessing the menu settings from the receiver. 

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1 hour ago, Vincent R. said:

You are not messing with the 2.4 spectrum. Adaptive freq hopping (frequency-hopping spread spectrum) is FCC an approved method, and the EU regulators are accepting it as well with a bit more clarification from the manufacturer. 

 

 

 

Adaptive frequency hopping is not "messing with the spectrum" indeed. It's being more efficient.

 

But playing with the RTS/CTS mechanisms, which is an entirely different matter, could be a problem in some environments.

 

 

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