New Event computer Setup

Glort · October 16, 2011

1

jww · October 16, 2011

That is incredible!!

Congrats! I would love to see some pics of this setup! Good luck and keep us posted!

ARKreations · October 17, 2011

Glort wrote: »

If I can find the plugs I need, I'll buy an industrial power supply of the right voltage and build a filter if needed and run all the leads off one supply for each table and incorporate that into the network cable conduit. That will make things that much simpler and tidier again.

I'd be very careful about combining power and network cables in the same conduit. It's a very common rule of thumb to keep power and data wires separated as electrical fields can have an impact on data transmission. If you need to locate them that close, I would recommend separate conduits.

Rocketman766 · October 17, 2011

Sounds like someone has been busy lately... Nice work there Glort, you going to have pics of the finished product?

angevin1 · October 18, 2011

Holy Multitasking Batman! Video. We've had a few discussions in the Video Forum about trying to accomplish Video and photos at the same time. Really hard to do. You must be thinking about having a separate Videographer to accomplish that task. Of course if you're not busy shooting photos then that would make it simple.

Sam · October 18, 2011

If there ever was a need to substantiate your credentials as a premier event photography company in Oz this is it!

No one gets a set up like this without a real business need.

Good luck with it all, and yes we want photos!!!!

Sam

angevin1 · October 19, 2011

By request is a sound way to go about it. It'll definitely make life easier. I too wonder what folks would be willing to pay for a vid of their performance.

I have to tell ya, I'm in awe over all of the details you have there in your set-up. I am in special agreement that the time to sell ( and deliver) is on the turf right then and there, and you have that covered.

Great job. I look forward to future reports & photos too.

Cheers,

Sam · October 19, 2011

Just reading about all your gear, and the set up makes my head spin.

Photos or it didn't happen.

With the team of course!

Sam

Snowgirl · October 20, 2011

You have been busier than a one-armed paper hanger of late, haven't you? I'm with Sam. Photos?

Rocketman766 · October 20, 2011

Surprised by the following one of your threads gathers???? No way, I always enjoy reading what you are up to. I am hoping to possibly pick up some ideas or tips along the way since I am in the process of upgrading my set up also. Hope it works well for you this weekend. Looking forward to reading about it next week.

Zerodog · October 21, 2011

Very cool. I want to see some pics!

Glort · October 21, 2011

Images aren't working for me ATM so I'll shoot some at the event tomorrow that are better than what i took in the driveway and put them up through the week.

JimKarczewski · October 21, 2011

Now you need to get yourself some new 1DX's and just plug the network right into the camera.

Snowgirl · October 21, 2011

Glort wrote: »

Hey Snow,

Yeah, I have been trying to get things done while I feel up to it which isn't too often. Always lots of ideas, not too often the ability to carry them out.

Sounds much too familiar. I FINALLY got my children's photo book (with original poetry) done for my grandkids for Christmas - a year late. Same reasons - lack of physical energy and health issues.

I had 2 events postponed last weekend and while I was looking forward to the money, I have to say deep down I was bloody relieved I didn't have to drag my sorry but around some paddocks because I was really not up to it.

Feeling a bit energetic about this weekend so hopefully the event comes off. I have to check numbers yet but hopefully they will be enough to justify at least a shakedown run with the new setup and travelling all the way there and back. .

[COLOR="rgb(46, 139, 87)"]Best of luck with this week-end's event. Sounds like you are going gang busters. Pleasant surprise - have had three portrait shoots as a result of my prior work at horse shows (not horse pictures, I might add - family shoots). Apparently my prepaid model is working in an unexpected way - it has added perceived value to my work. Yay![/COLOR]

lifeinfocus · October 24, 2011

I'm in Awe
I managed the development and operation of a 10,000 node, 300 server network years ago and I know how much work that was. Now I am doing what I love - photography and creating videos from them.

To see your type of setup is just awe inspiring. Boy, would I love to see that in action.

Love to see some photos of the setup.

I am in the process of building a new single machine for photography and video work. It is taking a lot of time to do the research and choose the best components at fair price, so I can imagine what it takes to develop the mobile system you have created.

Sam · October 24, 2011

Glort,

You slipped in "Just glad I make my own fuel". You make your own fuel????????????????????

This needs more details!!

Oh, and $300 in sales out of 24 participants is awesome.

Sam

Rocketman766 · October 25, 2011

Good to hear that your shake down run went off well without too many problems. I have wanted to try wireless but have been a bit scared to try it.
I think one of the items that continuously impresses me is how easily and inexpensively you obtain your PCs. Maybe I am missing something here with the currency exchange, but I wish I could get PCs as easily as you.

Also love the "make my own fuel". Like I said earlier, love your posts because I always learn something... not sure how I can use that one, but still learning something!

angevin1 · October 25, 2011

Wow Glort! Great follow thru and reportage, as usual. And yes, $300 for 24 riders is awesome. Percentage wise it's better than $1800 for 220 riders, right?

So all of your cars are diesel? I like how you've taken ahold of that expense and killed it! Nice work!

I know that set-up may not seem impressive to you, but to me and the uninitiated, it sounds like a lot of work went into it...and it did!

Also sounds like the video is going to work okay.

Cheers, tw

Snowgirl · October 25, 2011

I,for one, am totally impressed. Period.

puzzledpaul · October 25, 2011

Glort wrote: »

The thought about the fuel occoured as I was driving past a few service stations and saw fuel here atm is the equivelent of $6 a gallon. I read on forums all the time about people in the US freaking when it hits $4 a gallon like the world is ending and given that my truck holds about 25 gal and i used a bit over half a tank of fuel there and back, ( my trailer is ike a block of flats and very UNaerodynamic) it would have been a fair chunk out of the days takings if I had to pay for it.

Petrol here is £5.90 > £6.50 / gall (within a 5ml radius) ...

Fortunately, I lug my gear around on a bike (pedal variety)

Interesting read, btw.

pp

Rocketman766 · October 26, 2011

Thanks for the very informative write ups. I have another event this weekend and I am going to give wireless a shot. I guess my biggest obsticle is the fact that I don't want it to fail... but I won't know until I try. I might run an ethernet cable and have it laying next to me just in case... I never thought about looking into recycled machines or places getting rid of them like that. I have purchased all of my current PCs from eBay and like you said, guys with pallets full of stuff have no problem breaking up the lots. I appreciate your info on the Jalbum and the system. I may have to look into it, sounds like it is customizable to a certain extent. At least to the amount I would need.

You mentioned Hammy's system, I have had the chance to see it in action and was in complete awe... I doubt I will ever be that big. It is very impressive to say the least.

To say that I am impressed with your DIY ability, would be an understatement.

Rocketman766 · October 27, 2011

I don't mind sharing my set up/process at all, maybe I can fine tune it with some input also. I currently have the luxury of shooting 100% indoors right now so I have to setup and tear down everything for each event. I currently use Photo Parata for my loading and viewing software. It is very easy on the PCs which is one reason why I still use it, plus it is very simple to set up which makes it very nice for my staff, I mean family, to use.

For my loader/server, is a PC I built from a bare bones kit, its older and not so powerful but works great. Its just a Core Duo chipped PC running Win7 (so I can take advantage of all my ram). I use a USB card reader to load the images in the server. If I can't shoot tethered I have a person run back and forth gathering cards from me and my other photog. I am currently running 22 viewing stations (had more but have to replace a few montors) which never seems like enough. My viewing stations consist of (currently) 2 IBM ThinkCentre Pentium 4 PCs running Win XP. I have 2 Ncomputing X550 kits installed in each which allows me to run 11 total viewing stations off of each PC. I have thought of using 4 PCs with just 1 X550 kit in each in case I lose a viewing station, that way I don't lose 11 Viewing stations, just 6. The only reason I don't is because of space and power issues. It really doesn't take up much more space but I cut it close on power all the time. With this viewing station set up/software, I only have to have a monitor and a mouse. There is no keyboard for the customer to pound on and they can not exit out of the software.

All of this is connected together through a gigabit network consisting of a Linksys 4 port gigabit router and a gigabit switch for the other PCs we use (see below). I run all Cat6 cables. This might be a bit much but for the amount of images we send back to the server, I thought I would go gigabit for the few extra bucks it cost me.

Behind the counter I currently have a few too many PCs but heres why: I am printing onsite this year and I am using 3 old Sony dye sub printers ( 1 4x6 and 1 5x7 same model, and 1 for 8x10s) which are all SCSI printers. I can only connect the 4x6 and 8x10 to one PC since the USB-SCSI adaptor does not support daisy chaining. I use an old laptop for the 5x7 printer and just have it set to share across the network so I can just choose the correct printer when a print is needed. These printers weigh a ton! Each one ways about 50 lbs. As soon as I run out of paper for them, I am tossing them to the curb and buying a few ink jets and setting up a CIS for each. Paper is no longer manufactured for my 4x6/5x7 printers so thats why they are getting tossed. The PC that the 4x6/8x10 printers are connected to is another IBM Thinkcentre Pentium 4 which is the PC that we use for quick editing for printing.

The hardest part is of course the set up and take down. Every location is set up different so I always have to set up tables and put the monitors out. I am currently working on a housing for the monitors that would allow me to just open them up and have the monitors mounted inside with the mouse ready to go. I am putting a power stirp in the back and all of my network cables bunched together so that all I would have to do is put this housing on the table, connect 1 power cord, grab the network cables and connect them to the PC and away we go! I am making them 6' long so they will sit on a regular table with no problems. Once I get this done, I think it will cut my setup time down in a big way. It currently takes me about 3-4 hours to set everything up and another 4 to tear down. With a small wife and 1 daughter, I get to carry everything back and forth from the trailer to the set up site. During a normal sized event for me, I use 7-9 tables plus 2 more for my staff to run the show.

I have plans and am currently in the process of replacing these PCs but I have to be smart about this as its going to cost some $$$$ that my wife doesn't want me to spend. I am going to buy a wireless router so I can give that a shot this weekend.

I know how tough it would be to run cables around the horses for your events, I grew up with my father on the local rodeo circuts. I can't imagine someone running cables around an arena like that....

jbakerphoto · October 28, 2011

Man yall have very enviable setups. I am only running 3 lonely laptop viewstations at the moment. Glort, windows 7 ultimate will run 20 connections supposedly . I wrote my own software for my setup. I have viewing software that will allow you to add stuff to a shopping cart and it will append the size that they want to the file name of the image and put it in a folder on a network drive. I wrote another program that watches the folder and shows all of the outstanding orders. Then all you have to do is work the queue. It will also open all of the pictures in the riders order folders in photoshop. So far it has proven it self to be a pretty quick workflow. I am rewriting the viewing part to make it quicker to find the photos and look a little better on different size screens. Who knows when i will be done with that.

I dropped the cis thing. It just would not work when I switched to someone less tech savvy to print for me. (my revolving door of assistants is a whole other conversation) I am just ordering ink off ebay for 1/2 price or so. i print 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10 onsite and we keep up for the most part. We did a 4 day youth rodeo about 2 months ago and we set a new 1 day sales record on the last day. Always nice!

Rocketman766 · October 28, 2011

Yes I am running Win7 on the server but maybe server is the wrong word. It is simply the host machine for the images and the heart of the software (photo parata) that I run. The viewing stations connect via the IP address of the host PC. They are not actually clients of the host. Now that I have said that, I could be entirely wrong and just don't have enough viewing stations to reach the limit. The edition of Photo Parata I run will allow unlimited viewing stations connected to the host.

For the printers, I did not buy them brand new, Ebay!!!! I only paid $100 for one and $75 for the other two. With the number of prints on each roll and the price of the paper/printer, if I sell 90% of the rolls at my set prices, or even 80%, I will make AT LEAST a few hundred percent profit on the prints. If those numbers work out, I have no problem dumping the printers at the curb if I can't find a buyer (yes, I will tell them of the lack of paper resources) for the printers.
My work flow is about the change slightly, but right now the customers choose their images by placing them in the cart or favorites thru the viewing software. When they complete the purchase, the person printing can then copy their cart to a folder which sorts the customers cart by phone number (phone number is required to put photos in a cart). The images copied to the carts are full size copies for printing. The customer indicates on the paper order form what size print they want. When the staff is ready to print the photo, after the appropriate crop has been administered, they simply choose the proper printer from the drop down menu.

I am shooting another event this weekend and I am handing over the "set up" reins to my wife since I will be at work during the set up time. (yes I still have a day job) It is a scaled down set up since we have been told we won't have much space. I loaded the truck, waiting to see how it goes and how many phone calls I will get while she sets up. I purchased a wireless router and I am going to give that a shot. I won't be printing at this event because of space, so it should be pretty easy for her.

Managing that much time for set up and take down is a complete mood killer and energy drainer. 75% of my events are local ( 2.5 hrs drive or closer ) but for anything not in my home town area I get a hotel so I can get some rest. I think after last week my wife is beginning to understand how much I dislike the set up and take down portion.

angevin1 · October 29, 2011

Glort wrote: »

Lance,
I was out at my oil friends place a couple of hours later and got 2 txt messages close together thanking me for the great videos. When I got home tonight, one of the mothers had emailed me with a very nice message saying how good the vid was ( I thought I have a bit of practicing to do it when I had a quick look at the fottage) and what a great thing for the kids. She was also absoloutley amazed that I was able to give it to her son to bring home.
I was just glad the thing worked OK.
She also said that she was on a committe for another sport called "Footsal" and wanted me to come out and video the kids at that nesxt season. I hope they play it indoor so I don't have something else weather dependent.

So thanks again Tom, that was a real help you gave me putting me on to that software and much appreciated.
I'll have another practice with the horses tomorrow and there will be a couple of good customers there I will give one to as a sample as I know if they like it, everyone in their clubs will know about it well and truly.

Ah, Job well done sounds like to me! Onsite, instant gratification, I'm liking it. Sounds like your Vid Skillz are right on too! Expect more work from that!

Rocketman766 · November 1, 2011

Ok, so I said I was going to give wireless a try this weekend. First attempt... failure. I could not get a signal to save my life. I was only a short 75 feet away from the router, but it was the 3 large concrete/brick walls between us that killed me (i think). I was unable to run a back up ethernet cable, so we dropped back to plan C, card runners. I will try wireless again this weekend as the next venue has ZERO walls between me and the loader.

Another issue reared its ugly head this weekend, one that I knew could and would happen.... one of my Ncomputing cards stopped working. This dropped my number of viewing stations available from that PC from 11 to 6. Luckily for me it was a smaller event and I had 5 open ports in the 2nd viewing station PC. I just have to rebuild before this weekend.

Glort, glad to hear your video worked for you. My wife has asked when I will start shooting video, I haven't mastered what I do yet, much less have time to take on something else! Good for you to be able to do both, hope it works well for you.

Lance.

Rocketman766 · November 2, 2011

I was using the internal antenna for my wi-fi. I will definitely give the external usb a try, not sure if I can use the 1M extension because I would have no where to raise it to. This weekends event will be a straight shot so it should work. (fingers crossed) I will also look into an external antenna for the router.

You then lost me at "mental arithmetic"..... I already had a headache from trying to get ready for this weekend, first time I will be in two places at once. So for your newest rig, I'll just wait for the pics.

Glort · November 6, 2011

Rocketman766 wrote: »

I was using the internal antenna for my wi-fi. I will definitely give the external usb a try, not sure if I can use the 1M extension because I would have no where to raise it to. This weekends event will be a straight shot so it should work. (fingers crossed) I will also look into an external antenna for the router.

You then lost me at "mental arithmetic"..... I already had a headache from trying to get ready for this weekend, first time I will be in two places at once. So for your newest rig, I'll just wait for the pics.

How did you go lance?

Rocketman766 · November 7, 2011

Overall, well, I wanted to just crawl in a hole at one point...

My wife is dead set on printing onsite. If you recall, these are old printers which are at the end of their usefulness to me. I took my test shots, everything looked great on my laptop that I was tethered to. So far so good. I was connected to the router via wireless connection and able to very quickly transfer my files. There was no issue with the connection at all, very happy about that and I didn't even need the USB antenna because I was close enough without any obstructions.

I noticed that my images were getting a bit backed up in the camera. I was having to wait on them to download which cause a few small problems but I was able to fix on the fly. Then, it all locked up! At this point I just disconnected, no longer shooting tethered and kept going. Little bit about how I shoot these events.... I get the performance order before the event and make a separate folder on my camera card for each team. So now that I am no longer tethered, I pulled out my card reader and started manually transferring the photos over between teams. Luckily for me, the judges were slow so I had a solid 1 to 1.5 minutes to change cards, delete some and start the transfer. I don't know why the tethering locked up. Just one more thing to look into. I may have been filling the camera's buffer a bit.
Now for my absolute best part of the day ( extreme sarcasm ). Printing. Since this is new territory for me, printing onsite, my wife figured out how to make the PRINTS turn out correct but the images on my laptop looked horrible... go figure. I had to shoot really cool (Kelvin setting 3500) and once she opened the image, my wife hit the "auto correct" and printed. The prints came out perfect after doing this. I HATE the auto correct! Once I get my new printers, I think I will be doing some major printer/monitor calibrations! With the speed of the current printers, all it takes is 1 customer with a problem to cause a huge back up, which of course happened. Along with that, the network froze up, why I don't know.

Overall, it was a very rough day and the sales were right about where I expected them.....low.

Glort · November 7, 2011

Bugger!

I have had the same thing many times mate. You can test till your blue in the face at home and you can't make things fault even when you try and they should. get out on the road and they will be working perfectly and they will crash..... But only ever at the busiest time when you can't reboot or have time to methodically think the problem through.

I had a colour balance problem a while back which was a mystery but then figured it was just one camera. My wife had dialed in some custom settings for the contrast, saturation etc and it looked shocking. Putting the normal settings back fixed things.

I have never calibrated monitors and they have always been close enough to work with, usually quite accurate. I had a LOT of trouble setting up my current 4700 printers and following the online suggestions made them worse if anything. The fix turned out to be loading a profile for Ilford paper which gave me absoloutley perfet prints, by far the best ever.
The amazing part was, not only did it give great colour on Ilford paper, but Kodak and a couple of other brands I tried as well!

It dosen't sound too bad though compared to some of the things we have had happen with networks refusing to connect and computers suddenly going into slow Mo.
At one big state event I did in january, we could only get half the vstations to connect.
being a 2 day event my son and I worked on it till 9:30 that night before going home to make sure they were all perfect. Even gave them a saturation test with some people that happend by whom were camping there that wanted to have a look. Came back the next morning and NOTHING would work and we hadn't moved or switched anything off. Ended up we saved the galleries to USB drives and manually loade d them on each machine. Bit of a pain but it got us through and that was good enough when all else had failed.

Duderino · April 2, 2012

Hi all...

I have just recently discovered this website and I have much enjoyed reading some of your entries. I am an event photographer in Norway and I am about to take on several Triathlons. I am looking at re-developing my set-up and your detailed entries have really helped me understand what I need to do. I currently have 3 Vstations which has always been enough as I operate in a permanent set-up during the summer, taking passenger photos of tourist trips. However, with the Triathlons, I will be shooting up to 1000 participants and will rely heavily on Vstaions for sales. At the moment I really liked Rocketman's set-up using the Ncomputing X550 to allow up to 10 Vstations to run off of one desktop. I have a desktop that is a good few years old, and I wonder if it would run so many Vstations. Is it like having 10 programs opened at once, and each put on different monitors??? This might overload my slow desktop. Might be time for a new one. Can the Ncomputing X550 be run off a laptop, or is there another similar version? Glort's software solution seems the way to go. I have run a quick test of IE in Kiosk mode and was shocked how great that is for what we do. I have some questions though. Even though Jalbum creates web based galleriens on the hard drive, does IE need to be connected to the internet in order to find the galleries? It seems to me a big margin for error if so, as connectivity drops and not all events can guarantee Wifi availability. Some more information on this guys would be greatly appreciated. I do think Jalbum is the software to use and I like the paper and pen method of making orders. Simple and everyone can do it. I am also interested to hear from you what systems you use for processing card payments? I am in the process of sorting this out for the coming season. Paypal have developed a new product that fits into the Iphone to swipe cards but still is unavailable. Plus I dont think it is available in Norway. Any kind of virtual terminal would be great if you know any out there.

Lets keep this thread going as there is some awesome information in here for event photographers.

New Event computer Setup

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