Excellent Job! In 1995 I worked for a TV company in Hong Kong. There were a few of them running in light grey metal cabinets. They were called LMS machines (Library Management Systems). They were using Beta tapes and that room had to be quite cold or else the tape heads would clog up resulting in video/audio dropouts. The tapes had barcode labels for the LMS to recognize etc.
I may end up using barcodes with a masking tape or post-it note like adhesive on the back so it doesn't damage the tapes, it's a good idea for archiving.
I thought LMS was originally D2 format we had about 9 of them in the station I worked in. In the newsroom we had a Betacart with about 3 sometimes 2 play out machines it was about 99% reliable and when it went down live there was quite a panic. It was really fast at loading and threading tapes though.
Not that you need to hear this, but I'll say it for the general audience..... there really isn't any 100-percent dependable solution for these kinds of mechanisms, simply because there's absolutely a billion things that can go wrong everywhere along the chain. That doesn't mean we shouldn't make it, and it also means that if people run into problems while making it they aren't failures or failing to achieve. It's just an incredibly difficult thing, and that is why digital files sitting on a hard drive so quickly replaced analog and cassette world that came before it.
Hey there, thanks for chiming in. I took away some good info from our conversation a few months ago and I 100% agree that it's not an easy task. During the dev process, any time you add moving parts into the mix, it can create an extra element of potential failure (opposed to just software which can also be a beast to tackle as well). I'd really like to get more people involved in this project to help out though, and I'm always open to suggestions, hardware or software wise. I'm not a professional in the broadcast archival industry so I can't speak to their true effectiveness but there's gotta be SOME value to those mega expensive (probably 20-100k) retrofitted sony flexicarts (i reference in this video) paired with modern software to deal with media ingestion and archiving. Admittedly, most of the magic is happening in the custom software controlling the Flexicarts and there's no doubt been countless hours spent writing that software to work somewhat seamlessly. I'd be very interested in hearing some first hand accounts of the retrofitted Flexicarts (made by blue lucy media and others) to better understand their shortcomings or really just any experiences with them. Then there's the flexicarts themselves which have been around since the late 80s and are in fact still around and kicking. They were originally designed not for media ingestion/conversion but just to automate the tv stations. I'm pretty gung-ho about this project because I have so many personal tapes I'd like to archive and I feel confident that if I can develop a workflow for my own 3k tapes, it could be repeated for anyone else. User experience and reliability are high priorities. It may take a while but I don't plan to stop until I've perfected the process.
I mean, well, kinda… where do you think those digital files get backed up? In many cases, ultimately, to a robotic backup tape libraries, which works the same as videotape libraries.
SKY, before it was forced become British Sky Broadcasting. The Broadcast Spec Beta-SP format used case for the tape used in the domestic Betamax format. Betacam (1/2" tape format) became the next format after U-Matic (3/4" tape). Betacam linear speed ran ran several times fast than the domestic format. So a domestic tape would cover about 2 and half hours. The same tape box used with Betacam tape would last a maximum of 30mins. Beta-SP was an upgraded version of Betacam The 'Beta' format became a mechanical standard, allowing for Digibeta and then several different versions of Digital came along, as compression algorithms . Key to the decks was a common RS-422 control standard. So even HDV -Hi-8 decks can be controlled by the same standard, just plug up the decks with a 9pin D type cable and they all work together, no matter the actual tape format . In the PAL world, people do not realize how even VHS-Betamax gave a very good picture for the domestic NTSC market, as these format had a higher write speed, (60Hz world) so you lost a lot less than the 50Hz world. (The rotational velocity of the tape heads were faster) So what was recorded was closer to the what was being shown. Thus S-VHS and Hi-8 formats had a real use in broadcast facilities. So you will will find a lot of NTSC s-VHS and Hi8 machines, where you will find far fewer if any in the PAL domain. Back to the pioneering robot machines used at SKY. Sky had the very first LMS format machine, with serial number 00001, 00002, 00003, 00004 systems. These used 6 standard machine,s with a robot arm which extracted the tape, and the 90min large cassettes, from the library, all with a bar code for the tape label. The machine would simply be loaded with a tape. The LMS read the barcode, stored in a bin. Then the control system was loaded via a BASYS news scripted system, giving all the necessary script (for autocue) and other media and instructions. Slug name, Insert and out timecode, and scheduled for a given show, or channel rundown. This would include all the promos and commercials. The robot arms were extremely fast. The whole machine was behind protective clean room panels. The LMS Movie channel versions were twice the size. Those channel could work completely automated, as no live content was used. Live channels, ie. Sky One, Sky News, The original Movie channels operated through Transmission suites. The suite itself had at least two machines beside the transmission controller, so tapes from studios could be played out by hand... These were hard working control suites and the controllers had a huge workload, as this was the place that "made the money" Commercials playout were key, and that involved called "Traffic". Sky News used a Beta-Cart. a much smaller short format tape system, as news would use the smaller tapes, and maybe only 3 m tapes at that. This was fats and furious. There would be tape errors, tapes getting jammed. This was because a huge volume of tapes would be run through the system and that took a good team to keep it going. Just the short opener of each bulletin may go through 7 or 8 tapes in the first 2 minutes, The robot loading taking tapes out and inserting tape s in via the SIDE of the players, which had a dedicated side loader system. there is no doubt this was key to the success of Sky, the rest followed. British Satellite Broadcasting had the later versions, only by months, for movie playout. They joined within a year of co broadcasting, and the rest is history. Sky was a global pioneer in this kind of technology and broke new ground almost every 6 months. Once the work was done, the rest moved in, and its all history now. Going to digital was next step
Years ago I did computer backups. We used various 'tape changing robots' some for cassettes and other larger form tape drives. There were even reel to reel robots. I saw similar robots used at radio stations in the day. I always wanted to do a large horizontal DVD/CD library with multiple drives for recording and playing. IBMs Tivoli Storage Manager was my favorite in the day to use for backups. Your bot looks great, keep it up! (Oh the old bots I used were steppers or servos, no pneumatics). The DVD archiving units were the size of a filing cabinet with 4 drives and 1000 dvd's that we used at a bank to keep old check images on for a few months till we archived the DVDs to offsite storage.
Pretty crazy that you could've made history just recording the stuff you watched on TV in the 80s, 90s and early 2,000s. I'm sure there is a lot of local news gold out there too.
Sony had some pretty large tape robots back in the day - unfortunately, I only saw it after it had been decommissioned, but one place I was working at had a D2 library that was spread over multiple 19" rack cabinets - even though it only handled the "medium size" D2 carts, they were still huge (11" x 7", I think) - that was using DVR-28 D2 machines, one of which I still have. It was replaced with a Sony Petasite digital tape library that used LTO tapes.
@@midwestcyberpunk The people that had used it before it was ripped out said it was extremely reliable - it was pretty complex though, not least because it had to flip the tapes through 90 degrees to load them. The Petasite was a lot simpler because it stored the tapes in the library in the same orientation that they loaded into the drives.
There was also a U-Matic tape changer called "The Director". A local hospital had one to automate their in-house TV channel. I actually have the control unit and some of the mechanical parts out of one that had been scrapped. Ironically you could do a modern digital version with a Raspberry Pi and some attached storage.
The LMS library management system we had at a TV station i worked at in the 90s had all the commercials in racks on the right side and 5 Sony decks stacked on the left. It took up a lot of room. I'd say 2' deep x 5' wide x 6' high
This is genuinely a VERY useful thing, not just for my hoarded tapes/cd’s etc, but also for Data Archiving! Either a janky revived digital VHS low cost solution i want to attempt sometime, or those proper LTO Tapes or Sony Optical Disc Archive (or a DIY version with Blu Ray disks in a 3D Printed Cassette…) I’m rambling, but this is a project that I’ve been wanting to do, so AMAZING job!
Thanks. Yeah it could easily be converted to do whatever media. The tape holding slot section is easily removable/adjustable so any number of formats would work. The jaws on the gripper are removable too. When I upgrade the extender to steppers, that would allow for larger tapes too.
@@midwestcyberpunk other question, do you have/will you be releasing the CAD and Code for this project? If i ever make a Makerspace having a G i a n t Jellyfin Server running off of one of these machines would be cool af!, heck even just a “jukebox” of sorts for the rec room!
@@ericlotze7724 Eventually yes. In future videos I'll go through some of the details and processes I used and release the files to thingiverse or github
I have an old DAT changer that we used for tape backups at the ISP I used to work at. It was controlled via two SCSI channels - one to tell it to rotate to next tape (there were I believe 7 tapes in the carrier) and the other to read or write to tape. Same idea with a gigantic MO jukebox one of my coworkers owned - except that had one robot for moving media between storage slots and drives, and four MO drives, so it took 5 SCSI channels. :P
I worked in a post production facility that had plenty of these machines. Some TV channels were nothing more than one of these machines and someone there to watch the output - single man operation! Because some of these channels were totally forgettable and on cable or digital services nobody watched, there was nobody around to remember them. For example, the Landscape Channel? Yeah, there was a channel that just showed pastoral scenes all day. The companies that serviced these niches were very niche too, and in the UK the customer base was all condensed within spitting distance of the BT Tower in the West End. From the middle of the late 90's hard disks began to take over, with companies such as Grass Valley providing very bespoke things. So much merger and acquisition activity went on that nothing was ever lasting forever. We also had the transition from analogue to digital, so U-matic was really old, that was for people that could not afford Beta SP or DigiBeta. DigiBeta decks were often hired for the day, they weighed 50Kg in the flight case and cost around $50K to buy. Only around the turn of the century did you start to have kids in basements with After Effects doing title sequences that this absurdly expensive game was up. My favourite kit was the clock used to synchronise everything. We had two Leitch clocks, costing $40K each and they did not even tell the time. They sent a timecode signal out to the clocks that would show the time, however, the clock itself was this 1U unit with an unforgiving US modem connection on the back that you could dial into and set the time. I had to do this when the clocks changed and invariably one clock would try and correct the other, so I would be running around the building between the two clocks trying my best to utterly botch it up as best as I could, slightly pissed at 2 a.m.
The machine loader in hackers was a real thing. I saw one in Sky TV in London to load up BetaSP tapes of all their shows. They would barcode the tapes and dump them in a pile and the machine would load the pile into bays and then the shows would be entered into a system where the timecode of the start point of the show was entered. The loading system would fetch the tape load it, forward the tape to the precide timecode and play it and then use an automated vision switcher to cut to that deck. It meant several stations worth of shows could be handled without a live guy there. The only tech person they needed was a person to watch the machine. It filled a whole long room and the arm moved quitre quickly. If you contact sky tv they may have pictures of it in use.
Interesting. Do you remember if it was pneumatic? I know there are similar units that actually exist/existed but the one in Hackers moves very jerky when the footage is slowed down, like it's a prop. Also the tape fight scene, that would be a bit of custom programming but not impossible i guess. I'm open to the idea that it's not a prop though.
@@midwestcyberpunk I have asked the Sky Technoical Director who no longer works there. I will get back to you. In the meantime check this out... looked similar to his but a room size not a warehouse size. www.storagetutorials.com/tape-library-autoloader/ cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineImages/IBM_3590_DLT_mobile.jpg
@@comedicsketches Ive asked one of the former Technical Directors of sky to chime in and hopefully he will give some more details here in the comments. I was given a tour by him and I do know him.
What a nightmare from a big company bench technician's point of view. Too many years for me. Don't even think about sending me work. Ugg. Glad you had fun with it. Amazing streaming has replaced this tech.
That is entirely too cool. I'd love to have one of those for capturing tapes! One tiny problem. I not only capture VHS, but also VHS-C, U-matic, beta, betacam, 8mm, DVCam, miniDV... you get the idea.
Take the biggest format that you use, design a carrier that includes a barcode identifying the media type, and use that to schedule a "store tape" operation that takes the tape to the player instead of to a storage slot.
for archival purposes it'd save some time to have a tape in waiting position just above the VCR, which can be filled while a tape is playing instead of waiting for the whole retrieval process between tapes. This would also be a good station to do photography at. I would advocate for quite a different design for archival but staying with the essential design, the location dependent access time can be eliminated by pre-fetching and post-caching to fixed locations. When a tape is finished, move that tape to the post-cache, move the pre-fetched tape into the VCR, and now a tape is playing again so it doesn't matter how long it takes to return the old tape to it's library location and fetch the next tape. For non-archival purposes this could be slower in one specific case. The gripper must be empty when a tape finishes so that it can move that tape away, wherever it's going. So there is only pre-fetch and post-fetch, if the tape finishes and you're holding a tape, that tape has to go away (pre-fetch or abort). Several modifications would avoid this, one is a double-gripper assembly or multiple grippers , another is a separate loader mechanism which receives and ejects tapes to different locations for the gripper to interact with them. I think the separate loader is the right idea, but multiple grippers would allow cassette battles
Those are good, optimized ideas for a later revision. If time and money will allow, I'd like to get 2 vcrs and 2 grippers eventually. Right now I'm focusing on switching the extender pneumatics to a stepper based linear actuator drive.
@@midwestcyberpunk Linear actuators, assuming the typical threaded rod turning to shift a nut back and forth, tend to be very slow and very high torque. You might be happier with the performance of a rack & pinion, which will be able to move faster and will have a lot less force behind it.
@@midwestcyberpunk Belt should be fine, that axis is low accuracy. There's a design in 3D printers where you run a strip of timing belt between two points, then pull a loop of it between two wheels and over the drive gear, then the drive gear turning will shift it's position along the strip. I think this would be pretty ideal in this case. Instead of turning an end to move a point, you move the point to shift the ends, so the ends can extend past the drive mechanism by almost the whole length of the strip
@Ziraya0 I just designed a custom cnc plasma cutter with a belt drive like that. In fact that may be my next video. The parts from sendcutsend.com should be here this week
Cool! maybe version 2 have a camera on the arm to read the tape title and save it for reference. Also, you could add more Tape players / Recorders as destinations for continual use. I worked in a VHS factory where we manually changed the recorder tapes every 30 mins; your robot would have handy if someone had a sick day 🤣
A few years ago the call center I worked at had a disused robotic tape library. It was so much fun to watch it go. Reminded me of Hackers every time. The library wasn't huge and it used DAT tapes but it was still very cool.
Great project, hoping to implement something similar with LTO tapes. Been buying older models when I notice them for the right price (as-is) and repairing them. Have a tape library already so might dissect it to build a tape library like library in a warehouse.
yeah it would be easily adaptable for other types of tapes. I'd recommend not using pneumatics and instead use more servos and add plenty of sensors. I don't have enough in this version.
This would be great for archival purposes, but could be even better with more VCRs. You need at least one more to allow one tape to be rewound, while the other is playing. With a third VCR, you could be capturing two tapes at a given time, if you offset their start/rewind cycles right.
I've noticed all of the commercial flexicart systems have 2 VCRs so that makes sense. My original idea of just using it to remote control 10 tapes didn't really consider rewinding. I figured I'd do that manually later on but you're absolutely correct, auto-rewinding would be the polite, kind thing to do. The entire system is pretty modular so it won't be hard to modify my tape carrier system but i'll lose some tapes. I think in the future I'll just buy a longer linear rail. Did you work with tape archival using flexicarts or something else? I'd be interested to hear about it.
@@midwestcyberpunk I don't have any hands on experience. I did look up info on enterprise tape backup systems for work (petabyte to exabyte scale tape robots) once, but nothing extensive. I found your project on Hackaday.
Interesting machine. I did not know there was anything like that. However, i think it is a bit too complicated. Personally i would have gone with a fixed stack of tapes and a movable stripped down player. The player goes up to the tape, one cylinder pushes the tape in, it gets played, then another returns the tape (from the back, from what have been the inside of the player) to the rack. To avoid alignment issues, simply use bands of thin spring steel (or even plastic) as centering devices. Simplest i can think of is "length of a spring pulled together slightly so it bows out", if that makes sense. Being under slight tension would also prevent tapes from moving around due to vibration of the machine itself. Additionally, it would give some more room for error for the moving parts since the springs will take care of all the alignment.
It's nearly identical to commercial machines (Sony Flexicart) with the exception of the pneumatics (Flexicarts do the basically the exact same thing with steppers or servos instead of pneumatics) I do plan on stripping a vcr down though and 3d printing a new beveled/rounded opening so the tapes slide in easier.
A nice change (especially for archival purposes) would be two armatures instead of one, one of them to fetch the next tape, the other to catch the current tape and return it to storage. Also, you should see if "twisted string" actuators are suitable- if so, then the average cost per actuator should drop.
Great video tape bot, love how you got the motion so similar to the one in Hackers. Need another one now so they can battle away! Saw the cyberdeck computer being used and glad to see you are going to do a video on its build
Hi, great project, back in the 90s' I did some work in a local TV station and I remember seeing the tape bot they had, the wall of U-matic tapes was the same as in hackers (fav film, corny computer film) from the old memory the local station was the same, was 30 plus years ago, cheers
When the movie came out it was a real cheesefest for me because I was studying programming at the time. I have to admit that I enjoyed it even though I watched it on VHS tape on a small TV
I built one of these things starting in about 2016 and it could switch between about 500,000 VHS tapes. It is called a Netgear ReadyNAS box and cost about 1/10th the price. It did take time to rip my VHS collection as there is nothing available even today to rip a VHS tape faster than real time. I now have several ReadyNAS boxes totaling around 350TB which would hold about 1 billion VHS tapes. It is a much cheaper option and 1,000x more reliable.
@@midwestcyberpunk _"there's not much entertainment value in watching a NAS just sit there though."_ Yea, I get it. About as much fun as staring at a VHS tape sitting on a shelf.
If you are in fact in jeffersonville, (profile listed that as a shipping address) come check it out irl sometime! I'm less than 2 hours away in Evansville.
Fantastic and fascinating video. We are friends on Facebook, but this is my first time hearing your voice. You have a great voice, very different than I might have guessed but great nonetheless. It also looks like you are also in Illinois maybe, which I also didn't know. Great project and info here, thanks for sharing.
I actually went back right before the video was shot and re-laser cut rounded corners on the tape slots just for that. Everything is actually working better now. The next step is gutting a VCR and 3d printing a new rounded, beveled opening for the tapes
the wipers one, notice it was winter there? good chance they were stuck one of the times he went to use them, i have seen it happen, not that bad but it did happen.
Just a random Simi off topic question. How were vhs tapes mass-produced... Not the blank tapes but the tapes with movies or other content. The machine must have been extremely fast and also been able to transfer nearly perfect video from the master with very little quality loss. I've never seen videos or other content regarding that equipment and I am interested in finding it.
I've read that smaller places would use regular VCRs. One pro VCR playing back a tape, then a video splitter, than maybe 20 cheaper consumer VCRs recording.
is VideoTapesOnline thing still going on? this sounds like a very cool thing to happen and I wish I knew about it earlier. fantastic build btw! I think you could solve some issues with tapes bumping into the rack by adding small flares that would allow some small margin of error when positioning the tapes for insertion. probably you have already done that and it's just not in the video.
We still do Videotapes Online on my private server. I did reduce the amount of rack entry error significantly if not almost entirely by rounding off and slightly angling the rack slot acrylic pieces. This is the square original: ruclips.net/video/Ak3rkvrt-Rw/видео.html This is the modified: ruclips.net/video/Ak3rkvrt-Rw/видео.html I do agree though some flares would help even more, also on the VCR. I plan on gutting a VCR and adding a flared, 3d printed opening for it.
@@svofski Right now I'm running it off my home internet connection which is maxed out (only 40mbps up speed) Eventually though I'd like to be able to afford a public owncast server so more people can get on. Stay tuned.
Like the kind used on heavy cnc Zs? I've seen that done but I didn't consider it. The gantry is only around 3-4lbs, the hybrid stepper seems to hold it without too much backlash
If you're well within spec for the bearings, all good. Especially considering the extremely low duty cycle. However you mentioned a lede on concept involving archiving, and presumably tens of thousands of cycles. In which case the crane will be a likely failure mode. I really enjoyed the video, great work!
The design really needs to be heavily revised. I got it working with around 80-90% success which was fine for the camera but not for day to day use. Using pneumatic cylinders to push tapes is way too dangerous for valuable tapes, they're just too powerful and hard to control without more sensors and a more sophisticated pneumatic control system. (I used pneumatics because that's what the hackers bot used in the movie) I may make a revised version that is fully stepper motor based with more position sensors but it will be a while.
@@midwestcyberpunk Thanks for the reply! This scene in hackers was my favorite. I like the hybrid stepper motor you are using. I was planning on not using pneumatics. Tho I think the pusher and gripper is nice. Is it using to much force and causing problems with the VCR?
@@midwestcyberpunk whoa! Thanks for introducing me to fornax void. My life has been changed for the better. I wonder what other pearls of wisdom you possess. Sing, you canary!
I still want to do a video where I basically recreate the big screen retrofit you did a little while ago in your video. I never did it, I got hung up buying a third TV for the larger lens to cut down and never picked it back up.
@@midwestcyberpunk Ah, cheers. Thought perhaps we might be closer neighbors. The "Midwest" is a big place. I'm in the Plains, but people here almost always call us Midwest.
Excellent Job! In 1995 I worked for a TV company in Hong Kong. There were a few of them running in light grey metal cabinets. They were called LMS machines (Library Management Systems). They were using Beta tapes and that room had to be quite cold or else the tape heads would clog up resulting in video/audio dropouts. The tapes had barcode labels for the LMS to recognize etc.
I may end up using barcodes with a masking tape or post-it note like adhesive on the back so it doesn't damage the tapes, it's a good idea for archiving.
I thought LMS was originally D2 format we had about 9 of them in the station I worked in.
In the newsroom we had a Betacart with about 3 sometimes 2 play out machines it was about 99% reliable and when it went down live there was quite a panic. It was really fast at loading and threading tapes though.
Not that you need to hear this, but I'll say it for the general audience..... there really isn't any 100-percent dependable solution for these kinds of mechanisms, simply because there's absolutely a billion things that can go wrong everywhere along the chain. That doesn't mean we shouldn't make it, and it also means that if people run into problems while making it they aren't failures or failing to achieve. It's just an incredibly difficult thing, and that is why digital files sitting on a hard drive so quickly replaced analog and cassette world that came before it.
Hey there, thanks for chiming in. I took away some good info from our conversation a few months ago and I 100% agree that it's not an easy task. During the dev process, any time you add moving parts into the mix, it can create an extra element of potential failure (opposed to just software which can also be a beast to tackle as well). I'd really like to get more people involved in this project to help out though, and I'm always open to suggestions, hardware or software wise. I'm not a professional in the broadcast archival industry so I can't speak to their true effectiveness but there's gotta be SOME value to those mega expensive (probably 20-100k) retrofitted sony flexicarts (i reference in this video) paired with modern software to deal with media ingestion and archiving. Admittedly, most of the magic is happening in the custom software controlling the Flexicarts and there's no doubt been countless hours spent writing that software to work somewhat seamlessly. I'd be very interested in hearing some first hand accounts of the retrofitted Flexicarts (made by blue lucy media and others) to better understand their shortcomings or really just any experiences with them. Then there's the flexicarts themselves which have been around since the late 80s and are in fact still around and kicking. They were originally designed not for media ingestion/conversion but just to automate the tv stations. I'm pretty gung-ho about this project because I have so many personal tapes I'd like to archive and I feel confident that if I can develop a workflow for my own 3k tapes, it could be repeated for anyone else. User experience and reliability are high priorities. It may take a while but I don't plan to stop until I've perfected the process.
Reality. I just laugh when people say robots are going to take over real soon. GL
I mean, well, kinda… where do you think those digital files get backed up? In many cases, ultimately, to a robotic backup tape libraries, which works the same as videotape libraries.
SKY, before it was forced become British Sky Broadcasting. The Broadcast Spec Beta-SP format used case for the tape used in the domestic Betamax format. Betacam (1/2" tape format) became the next format after U-Matic (3/4" tape). Betacam linear speed ran ran several times fast than the domestic format. So a domestic tape would cover about 2 and half hours. The same tape box used with Betacam tape would last a maximum of 30mins.
Beta-SP was an upgraded version of Betacam The 'Beta' format became a mechanical standard, allowing for Digibeta and then several different versions of Digital came along, as compression algorithms . Key to the decks was a common RS-422 control standard. So even HDV -Hi-8 decks can be controlled by the same standard, just plug up the decks with a 9pin D type cable and they all work together, no matter the actual tape format . In the PAL world, people do not realize how even VHS-Betamax gave a very good picture for the domestic NTSC market, as these format had a higher write speed, (60Hz world) so you lost a lot less than the 50Hz world. (The rotational velocity of the tape heads were faster) So what was recorded was closer to the what was being shown. Thus S-VHS and Hi-8 formats had a real use in broadcast facilities. So you will will find a lot of NTSC s-VHS and Hi8 machines, where you will find far fewer if any in the PAL domain.
Back to the pioneering robot machines used at SKY. Sky had the very first LMS format machine, with serial number 00001, 00002, 00003, 00004 systems. These used 6 standard machine,s with a robot arm which extracted the tape, and the 90min large cassettes, from the library, all with a bar code for the tape label. The machine would simply be loaded with a tape. The LMS read the barcode, stored in a bin. Then the control system was loaded via a BASYS news scripted system, giving all the necessary script (for autocue) and other media and instructions. Slug name, Insert and out timecode, and scheduled for a given show, or channel rundown. This would include all the promos and commercials. The robot arms were extremely fast. The whole machine was behind protective clean room panels. The LMS Movie channel versions were twice the size. Those channel could work completely automated, as no live content was used. Live channels, ie. Sky One, Sky News, The original Movie channels operated through Transmission suites. The suite itself had at least two machines beside the transmission controller, so tapes from studios could be played out by hand... These were hard working control suites and the controllers had a huge workload, as this was the place that "made the money" Commercials playout were key, and that involved called "Traffic".
Sky News used a Beta-Cart. a much smaller short format tape system, as news would use the smaller tapes, and maybe only 3 m tapes at that. This was fats and furious. There would be tape errors, tapes getting jammed. This was because a huge volume of tapes would be run through the system and that took a good team to keep it going. Just the short opener of each bulletin may go through 7 or 8 tapes in the first 2 minutes, The robot loading taking tapes out and inserting tape s in via the SIDE of the players, which had a dedicated side loader system.
there is no doubt this was key to the success of Sky, the rest followed. British Satellite Broadcasting had the later versions, only by months, for movie playout. They joined within a year of co broadcasting, and the rest is history.
Sky was a global pioneer in this kind of technology and broke new ground almost every 6 months. Once the work was done, the rest moved in, and its all history now. Going to digital was next step
Ah, a fellow man of culture. Hackers is one of my all-time favorite movies.
Outstanding! Love that scene from Hackers (1995, 107 minutes) 😎
Hackers (1995, 107 minutes) is a classic
Years ago I did computer backups. We used various 'tape changing robots' some for cassettes and other larger form tape drives. There were even reel to reel robots. I saw similar robots used at radio stations in the day. I always wanted to do a large horizontal DVD/CD library with multiple drives for recording and playing. IBMs Tivoli Storage Manager was my favorite in the day to use for backups. Your bot looks great, keep it up! (Oh the old bots I used were steppers or servos, no pneumatics). The DVD archiving units were the size of a filing cabinet with 4 drives and 1000 dvd's that we used at a bank to keep old check images on for a few months till we archived the DVDs to offsite storage.
Pretty crazy that you could've made history just recording the stuff you watched on TV in the 80s, 90s and early 2,000s. I'm sure there is a lot of local news gold out there too.
That's what it feels like every time I pop in an unknown, unlabeled tape. I've found quite a few gems that way.
Sony had some pretty large tape robots back in the day - unfortunately, I only saw it after it had been decommissioned, but one place I was working at had a D2 library that was spread over multiple 19" rack cabinets - even though it only handled the "medium size" D2 carts, they were still huge (11" x 7", I think) - that was using DVR-28 D2 machines, one of which I still have. It was replaced with a Sony Petasite digital tape library that used LTO tapes.
Yeah they would be too big and heavy for my home use. Probably fairly reliable though.
@@midwestcyberpunk The people that had used it before it was ripped out said it was extremely reliable - it was pretty complex though, not least because it had to flip the tapes through 90 degrees to load them. The Petasite was a lot simpler because it stored the tapes in the library in the same orientation that they loaded into the drives.
There was also a U-Matic tape changer called "The Director". A local hospital had one to automate their in-house TV channel. I actually have the control unit and some of the mechanical parts out of one that had been scrapped. Ironically you could do a modern digital version with a Raspberry Pi and some attached storage.
I'll look into it. Any chance you could take some pics of the gripper and gripper arm if you have it? Very curious
The LMS library management system we had at a TV station i worked at in the 90s had all the commercials in racks on the right side and 5 Sony decks stacked on the left. It took up a lot of room. I'd say 2' deep x 5' wide x 6' high
This is genuinely a VERY useful thing, not just for my hoarded tapes/cd’s etc, but also for Data Archiving!
Either a janky revived digital VHS low cost solution i want to attempt sometime, or those proper LTO Tapes or Sony Optical Disc Archive (or a DIY version with Blu Ray disks in a 3D Printed Cassette…)
I’m rambling, but this is a project that I’ve been wanting to do, so AMAZING job!
Thanks. Yeah it could easily be converted to do whatever media. The tape holding slot section is easily removable/adjustable so any number of formats would work. The jaws on the gripper are removable too. When I upgrade the extender to steppers, that would allow for larger tapes too.
@@midwestcyberpunk other question, do you have/will you be releasing the CAD and Code for this project? If i ever make a Makerspace having a G i a n t Jellyfin Server running off of one of these machines would be cool af!, heck even just a “jukebox” of sorts for the rec room!
@@ericlotze7724 Eventually yes. In future videos I'll go through some of the details and processes I used and release the files to thingiverse or github
Absolutely wonderful! All you need is Voodoo People in the background.
I wanted to so badly but i didn't want to risk a copyright strike....prob would've been fine though
I have an old DAT changer that we used for tape backups at the ISP I used to work at.
It was controlled via two SCSI channels - one to tell it to rotate to next tape (there were I believe 7 tapes in the carrier) and the other to read or write to tape.
Same idea with a gigantic MO jukebox one of my coworkers owned - except that had one robot for moving media between storage slots and drives, and four MO drives, so it took 5 SCSI channels. :P
I worked in a post production facility that had plenty of these machines. Some TV channels were nothing more than one of these machines and someone there to watch the output - single man operation!
Because some of these channels were totally forgettable and on cable or digital services nobody watched, there was nobody around to remember them. For example, the Landscape Channel? Yeah, there was a channel that just showed pastoral scenes all day.
The companies that serviced these niches were very niche too, and in the UK the customer base was all condensed within spitting distance of the BT Tower in the West End. From the middle of the late 90's hard disks began to take over, with companies such as Grass Valley providing very bespoke things.
So much merger and acquisition activity went on that nothing was ever lasting forever.
We also had the transition from analogue to digital, so U-matic was really old, that was for people that could not afford Beta SP or DigiBeta. DigiBeta decks were often hired for the day, they weighed 50Kg in the flight case and cost around $50K to buy.
Only around the turn of the century did you start to have kids in basements with After Effects doing title sequences that this absurdly expensive game was up.
My favourite kit was the clock used to synchronise everything. We had two Leitch clocks, costing $40K each and they did not even tell the time. They sent a timecode signal out to the clocks that would show the time, however, the clock itself was this 1U unit with an unforgiving US modem connection on the back that you could dial into and set the time. I had to do this when the clocks changed and invariably one clock would try and correct the other, so I would be running around the building between the two clocks trying my best to utterly botch it up as best as I could, slightly pissed at 2 a.m.
That's the vibe I got from the tape titles in the Hackers scene. "Up your Garden Shed" is one of them.
The machine loader in hackers was a real thing. I saw one in Sky TV in London to load up BetaSP tapes of all their shows. They would barcode the tapes and dump them in a pile and the machine would load the pile into bays and then the shows would be entered into a system where the timecode of the start point of the show was entered. The loading system would fetch the tape load it, forward the tape to the precide timecode and play it and then use an automated vision switcher to cut to that deck. It meant several stations worth of shows could be handled without a live guy there. The only tech person they needed was a person to watch the machine. It filled a whole long room and the arm moved quitre quickly. If you contact sky tv they may have pictures of it in use.
Interesting. Do you remember if it was pneumatic? I know there are similar units that actually exist/existed but the one in Hackers moves very jerky when the footage is slowed down, like it's a prop. Also the tape fight scene, that would be a bit of custom programming but not impossible i guess. I'm open to the idea that it's not a prop though.
@@midwestcyberpunk I have asked the Sky Technoical Director who no longer works there. I will get back to you. In the meantime check this out... looked similar to his but a room size not a warehouse size.
www.storagetutorials.com/tape-library-autoloader/
cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineImages/IBM_3590_DLT_mobile.jpg
@@thesecretvaultunleashed9244 I appreciate it. I think a lot of hackers WAS in fact shot in the UK
@@thesecretvaultunleashed9244 What did they say?
@@comedicsketches Ive asked one of the former Technical Directors of sky to chime in and hopefully he will give some more details here in the comments. I was given a tour by him and I do know him.
What a nightmare from a big company bench technician's point of view. Too many years for me. Don't even think about sending me work. Ugg. Glad you had fun with it. Amazing streaming has replaced this tech.
"WAY COOL" - PHREAK
That is entirely too cool. I'd love to have one of those for capturing tapes! One tiny problem. I not only capture VHS, but also VHS-C, U-matic, beta, betacam, 8mm, DVCam, miniDV... you get the idea.
Take the biggest format that you use, design a carrier that includes a barcode identifying the media type, and use that to schedule a "store tape" operation that takes the tape to the player instead of to a storage slot.
Cool project! That movie is an absolute classic. Highly impactful on me in my younger years.
RUclips actually recommended me something cool and interesting?!?!?! wtf, planets collide!!!
Loved your project. I remember seeing another sort of tape robot in the "Clear And Present Danger" movie.
it's been a while. Was it video tapes or data tapes? I'll have to re-watch now.
What a great build! I've always had a passion for that tape robot in hackers. Cool to see someone make it real for them!
for archival purposes it'd save some time to have a tape in waiting position just above the VCR, which can be filled while a tape is playing instead of waiting for the whole retrieval process between tapes. This would also be a good station to do photography at. I would advocate for quite a different design for archival but staying with the essential design, the location dependent access time can be eliminated by pre-fetching and post-caching to fixed locations. When a tape is finished, move that tape to the post-cache, move the pre-fetched tape into the VCR, and now a tape is playing again so it doesn't matter how long it takes to return the old tape to it's library location and fetch the next tape.
For non-archival purposes this could be slower in one specific case. The gripper must be empty when a tape finishes so that it can move that tape away, wherever it's going. So there is only pre-fetch and post-fetch, if the tape finishes and you're holding a tape, that tape has to go away (pre-fetch or abort). Several modifications would avoid this, one is a double-gripper assembly or multiple grippers , another is a separate loader mechanism which receives and ejects tapes to different locations for the gripper to interact with them. I think the separate loader is the right idea, but multiple grippers would allow cassette battles
Those are good, optimized ideas for a later revision. If time and money will allow, I'd like to get 2 vcrs and 2 grippers eventually. Right now I'm focusing on switching the extender pneumatics to a stepper based linear actuator drive.
@@midwestcyberpunk Linear actuators, assuming the typical threaded rod turning to shift a nut back and forth, tend to be very slow and very high torque. You might be happier with the performance of a rack & pinion, which will be able to move faster and will have a lot less force behind it.
@Ziraya0 I'm probably going with a 15mm htd belt at first because I have some left over from the z axis. Agreed though, rack &pinion is better
@@midwestcyberpunk Belt should be fine, that axis is low accuracy. There's a design in 3D printers where you run a strip of timing belt between two points, then pull a loop of it between two wheels and over the drive gear, then the drive gear turning will shift it's position along the strip. I think this would be pretty ideal in this case. Instead of turning an end to move a point, you move the point to shift the ends, so the ends can extend past the drive mechanism by almost the whole length of the strip
@Ziraya0 I just designed a custom cnc plasma cutter with a belt drive like that. In fact that may be my next video. The parts from sendcutsend.com should be here this week
Cool! maybe version 2 have a camera on the arm to read the tape title and save it for reference. Also, you could add more Tape players / Recorders as destinations for continual use. I worked in a VHS factory where we manually changed the recorder tapes every 30 mins; your robot would have handy if someone had a sick day 🤣
I want to add a second esp32 with a camera for QR or barcodes. Agreed on the 2 VCRs
That's genius! Great job buddy
This would work as a tape backup system driven by Bacula.
A few years ago the call center I worked at had a disused robotic tape library. It was so much fun to watch it go. Reminded me of Hackers every time. The library wasn't huge and it used DAT tapes but it was still very cool.
Pretty awesome! I always thought that scene was pretty rad too. 👍 seen that movie at least 20 times growing up.
Made something from the movie hackers, you got my sub. This is awesome.
Back in the 1970’s in Australia some ACR 25 videotape machines were used for swapping tapes over during broadcasts at some stations
Great project, hoping to implement something similar with LTO tapes. Been buying older models when I notice them for the right price (as-is) and repairing them. Have a tape library already so might dissect it to build a tape library like library in a warehouse.
yeah it would be easily adaptable for other types of tapes. I'd recommend not using pneumatics and instead use more servos and add plenty of sensors. I don't have enough in this version.
This would be great for archival purposes, but could be even better with more VCRs. You need at least one more to allow one tape to be rewound, while the other is playing. With a third VCR, you could be capturing two tapes at a given time, if you offset their start/rewind cycles right.
I've noticed all of the commercial flexicart systems have 2 VCRs so that makes sense. My original idea of just using it to remote control 10 tapes didn't really consider rewinding. I figured I'd do that manually later on but you're absolutely correct, auto-rewinding would be the polite, kind thing to do. The entire system is pretty modular so it won't be hard to modify my tape carrier system but i'll lose some tapes. I think in the future I'll just buy a longer linear rail. Did you work with tape archival using flexicarts or something else? I'd be interested to hear about it.
@@midwestcyberpunk I don't have any hands on experience. I did look up info on enterprise tape backup systems for work (petabyte to exabyte scale tape robots) once, but nothing extensive. I found your project on Hackaday.
Very nicely done, MCP! Also, extra points for putting a VHS tape of "Hackers" at the top of the stack of tapes at 8:40.
Interesting machine. I did not know there was anything like that.
However, i think it is a bit too complicated. Personally i would have gone with a fixed stack of tapes and a movable stripped down player. The player goes up to the tape, one cylinder pushes the tape in, it gets played, then another returns the tape (from the back, from what have been the inside of the player) to the rack.
To avoid alignment issues, simply use bands of thin spring steel (or even plastic) as centering devices. Simplest i can think of is "length of a spring pulled together slightly so it bows out", if that makes sense. Being under slight tension would also prevent tapes from moving around due to vibration of the machine itself. Additionally, it would give some more room for error for the moving parts since the springs will take care of all the alignment.
It's nearly identical to commercial machines (Sony Flexicart) with the exception of the pneumatics (Flexicarts do the basically the exact same thing with steppers or servos instead of pneumatics) I do plan on stripping a vcr down though and 3d printing a new beveled/rounded opening so the tapes slide in easier.
A nice change (especially for archival purposes) would be two armatures instead of one, one of them to fetch the next tape, the other to catch the current tape and return it to storage.
Also, you should see if "twisted string" actuators are suitable- if so, then the average cost per actuator should drop.
Great video tape bot, love how you got the motion so similar to the one in Hackers. Need another one now so they can battle away! Saw the cyberdeck computer being used and glad to see you are going to do a video on its build
Cool project!
Thanks for this fascinating video
There is a guy who built the laptop props but they are actually functional as a computers/laptops.
Maybe give him a hoy hoy
Hi, great project, back in the 90s' I did some work in a local TV station and I remember seeing the tape bot they had, the wall of U-matic tapes was the same as in hackers (fav film, corny computer film) from the old memory the local station was the same, was 30 plus years ago, cheers
When the movie came out it was a real cheesefest for me because I was studying programming at the time. I have to admit that I enjoyed it even though I watched it on VHS tape on a small TV
I was 13 or so when I first saw it and even then I knew it was cheese but it was good cheese.
First thing you need is a Handle! A nickname, come one Joey, your nameless! :)
Love it man! I want to catch a stream sometime
I built one of these things starting in about 2016 and it could switch between about 500,000 VHS tapes. It is called a Netgear ReadyNAS box and cost about 1/10th the price. It did take time to rip my VHS collection as there is nothing available even today to rip a VHS tape faster than real time. I now have several ReadyNAS boxes totaling around 350TB which would hold about 1 billion VHS tapes. It is a much cheaper option and 1,000x more reliable.
there's not much entertainment value in watching a NAS just sit there though.
@@midwestcyberpunk _"there's not much entertainment value in watching a NAS just sit there though."_ Yea, I get it. About as much fun as staring at a VHS tape sitting on a shelf.
This is an epic project! Beautiful!
Hey! I was wondering when you might see this. Your music worked perfectly for the intro!
This rules!
If you are in fact in jeffersonville, (profile listed that as a shipping address) come check it out irl sometime! I'm less than 2 hours away in Evansville.
Fantastic and fascinating video. We are friends on Facebook, but this is my first time hearing your voice. You have a great voice, very different than I might have guessed but great nonetheless. It also looks like you are also in Illinois maybe, which I also didn't know. Great project and info here, thanks for sharing.
I remembered your name on here from when you played in cincy and stayed at nebbie's house in the 2010s. What gave IL away? It's not far off at all.
That's really super.
while im just a normie i commend your autistic endeavors and support you
always appreciated jules.
for both the player & the storage slots
you could angled bevels that guide the cassette into place
I actually went back right before the video was shot and re-laser cut rounded corners on the tape slots just for that. Everything is actually working better now. The next step is gutting a VCR and 3d printing a new rounded, beveled opening for the tapes
Very cool - hackers was a awesome movie! - Just remember not to digitize the copyright info at the start of the tapes 🤣 wink wink
Awesome man!
Thanks, and thanks for the tip :P
loved it
the wipers one, notice it was winter there? good chance they were stuck one of the times he went to use them, i have seen it happen, not that bad but it did happen.
Hack the planet indeed.
lol i just watched that movie a few weeks ago and thought the same thing because ive been into mcus lately and im born in 1984
I know I watched Hackers. But I don't remember any of it.
Just a random Simi off topic question.
How were vhs tapes mass-produced... Not the blank tapes but the tapes with movies or other content. The machine must have been extremely fast and also been able to transfer nearly perfect video from the master with very little quality loss. I've never seen videos or other content regarding that equipment and I am interested in finding it.
Good question, I'd be interested in seeing that also. Probably with a machine like mine and many many pro VCRs
@@midwestcyberpunk I asked chatgpt... It gave some information but it really didn't help too much... I've been interested in this for awhile.
I've read that smaller places would use regular VCRs. One pro VCR playing back a tape, then a video splitter, than maybe 20 cheaper consumer VCRs recording.
Amazing work! are there any more streams using owncast?
My personal server is unlisted because I have limited bandwidth but yes, directory.owncast.online/
is VideoTapesOnline thing still going on? this sounds like a very cool thing to happen and I wish I knew about it earlier. fantastic build btw! I think you could solve some issues with tapes bumping into the rack by adding small flares that would allow some small margin of error when positioning the tapes for insertion. probably you have already done that and it's just not in the video.
We still do Videotapes Online on my private server. I did reduce the amount of rack entry error significantly if not almost entirely by rounding off and slightly angling the rack slot acrylic pieces. This is the square original: ruclips.net/video/Ak3rkvrt-Rw/видео.html This is the modified: ruclips.net/video/Ak3rkvrt-Rw/видео.html I do agree though some flares would help even more, also on the VCR. I plan on gutting a VCR and adding a flared, 3d printed opening for it.
@@midwestcyberpunk is it possible to join your private broadcasts?
@@svofski Right now I'm running it off my home internet connection which is maxed out (only 40mbps up speed) Eventually though I'd like to be able to afford a public owncast server so more people can get on. Stay tuned.
@@midwestcyberpunk looking forward to it. cheers!
5:00 guide rails would prevent that
That's the plan in the next revision. Im going to completely gut a vcr and 3d print a more guided opening so they glide right in
More videos please =)
Have you thought about putting a counterweight on it to offset the gantry?
Like the kind used on heavy cnc Zs? I've seen that done but I didn't consider it. The gantry is only around 3-4lbs, the hybrid stepper seems to hold it without too much backlash
If you're well within spec for the bearings, all good. Especially considering the extremely low duty cycle. However you mentioned a lede on concept involving archiving, and presumably tens of thousands of cycles. In which case the crane will be a likely failure mode.
I really enjoyed the video, great work!
You just need another one of them and then you can recreate the robot fight that acid and zero have the video tape fight!!!
I have a post it note on my monitor that didn't make it to the script- apologizing for no tape fight scene with my bot lol
FUNtastic!
Would love to see a sequel but for today's modern audiences.
I am unsure if you will see this, but I would love to build it. It would also help with my archival process.
The design really needs to be heavily revised. I got it working with around 80-90% success which was fine for the camera but not for day to day use. Using pneumatic cylinders to push tapes is way too dangerous for valuable tapes, they're just too powerful and hard to control without more sensors and a more sophisticated pneumatic control system. (I used pneumatics because that's what the hackers bot used in the movie) I may make a revised version that is fully stepper motor based with more position sensors but it will be a while.
@@midwestcyberpunk Thanks for the reply! This scene in hackers was my favorite. I like the hybrid stepper motor you are using. I was planning on not using pneumatics. Tho I think the pusher and gripper is nice. Is it using to much force and causing problems with the VCR?
Will you build a stepper controlled version and have them fight for dominance? Also, what is the intro-outro music you used?
I just may. ruclips.net/user/fornaxvoid
@@midwestcyberpunk whoa! Thanks for introducing me to fornax void. My life has been changed for the better. I wonder what other pearls of wisdom you possess. Sing, you canary!
WHO ARE YOU!
First! This is so cool
I still want to do a video where I basically recreate the big screen retrofit you did a little while ago in your video. I never did it, I got hung up buying a third TV for the larger lens to cut down and never picked it back up.
Curious, where approximately in the "Midwest" are you?
(I redacted this)
@@midwestcyberpunk Ah, cheers. Thought perhaps we might be closer neighbors.
The "Midwest" is a big place. I'm in the Plains, but people here almost always call us Midwest.
"FiRsT"
I'm amazed that all of the VHS caps you've done have stayed on youtube w/o copyright strikes. Have you ever received one?
@Midwest Cyberpunk yeah a bunch. I just got a 8 tb external drive. Just need to get a new version now because mines been dead for a while
@@midwestcyberpunk damn autocorrect. I meant my vcr is dead
People are lazy now days everything proven vhs tapes keeps you moving more than Disney plus