Support CD/DVD automated duplicators

[eastbayarb]

It would be nice if imgburn supported CD/DVD automated duplicators. The software that usually comes with these devices

is crap, so since imgburn has many more options and supports many different images, it would be nice if imgburn

supported CD/DVD automated duplicators for those with these kinds of devices that want to set up a queue of multiple discs and let

imgburn/automated duplicator take care of the rest

[LIGHTNING UK!]

If someone wants to provide me with such a device, that's fine by me

[lfcrule1972]

Can I have a blu-ray burner as well please ?

[eastbayarb]

Can I have a blu-ray burner as well please ?

 

 

LUK,

 

I would be more than happy to buy you a Sony VGP-XL1B as long as it leads to imgburn supporting it as a

DVD/CD duplicator

[dontasciime]

Beta testers would also need one

 

I don't think these are available in UK without importing as I looked at them when you first mentioned them, they have a big price tag in UK as well.

[lfcrule1972]

I will be happy to beta test the blu-ray burners and let the boss and donta work on the duplicators - anyone going to send me one ?

[scorpion273]

I am willing to supply LIGHTNING UK with a duplicator, a little older Primera Composer, but would rather have the ImgBurn community really take a look at what it could do to start a fund drive to help out. I am the admin/developer/website creator of a site call BurnBots (http://burnbots.sourceforge.net/), which is exactly what this would be, except for the burning program of course. Adding support for duplicators has been a project of mine for several years into a program that is worth adding it into. ImgBurn is probably the best solution out there today( +queue function, +cd/dvd image types supported) , that I think already has a headstart with the queue function routine built in. Though burnbots is based on a commercial app, the robot function for that app only became developer available in the past year. I have struggled in having the time to dedicate in creating the DLL's that I speak of, but I think Lightning UK could add support for a robot function, along with printing of course, in a short period of time. Besides Lightning, and Beta testers et al, are there others that are interested in seeing this implemented? Please let me know, as I am willing to assist in getting him resources to get this development effort under way.

[bhoar]

If someone wants to provide me with such a device, that's fine by me

 

ImgBurn is my favorite burning application, let me get that out of the way first.

 

Pre-history: about 2-3 years ago I bought a Acronova DupliQ. Not liking their canned automation software much, I obtained the MF-Digital Baxter SDK (which works for the DupliQ) through unofficial means and wrote an AutoIT command-line application to tell the robot to do things, then wrote a batch file that would unload a disc and load the next disc every time the tray opened. Sadly since I am not an official SDK user (as I am not an MF-Digital customer...) I cannot distribute it.

 

So with that approach - if a program can start an action on disc insert and can eject when done (like iTunes CD import...), the script worked great. A slight modification to the batch file would be necessary to make it work with ImgBurn (you'd wait for the tray to be open for more than xx seconds so that the pre-verify tray cycle would not activate the robot).

 

And now for today:

 

But, a single 25-disc robot wasn't enough. I had to have more. Now I have a hobby...a passion...an obsession...an affliction...I collect robotic duplicators. A hell of a lot of them.

 

And I started documenting the serial protocols and coming up with a generic scripting approach (see http://hyperdiscs.pbwiki.com/ ). You can reach me by using the link at the bottom of the front page of the wiki if necessary.

 

L-UK: you might want to take a look at what spoon has done over at the dbpoweramp.com forums (beta forum, batch ripper sticky thread) - his ripper to automated device archtecture/interface is pretty simple (each of five actions is farmed out to a command line client), but therein lies the beauty, as anyone can develop "drivers" for it (as I have). If you mirrored his approach, I suspect you'd also want to add a "CycleTray" action to the five he has (Pre-Batch, Load, Unload, Reject and Post-Batch) for those people who have multi-drive robots (situations in which the core robot control application should have sole discretion on openng or not opening a tray so as to prevent robot/tray collision when servicing other drives).

 

-brendan

Edited July 11, 2008 by bhoar

[bhoar]

L-UK - I've also added a link to imgburn in the xl1bwiki here: http://www.xl1bwiki.com/MainPage.ashx

 

-brendan

[dtrayers]

The ONLY reason I haven't purchased a duplicator is because I'm afraid of the software to drive it. I've jobbed out some of my duplication work to a third party who uses a large tower system with a built in HD. Supposedly, it makes an exact copy of the master disc, and maybe so. But the quality of the burn is very inconsistant. I'm losing money haveing to re-burn DVDs as replacements, but I've NEVER made a bad DVD using ImgBurn.

 

So if I could find a robotic system which would work with ImgBurn I'd buy it in a New York minute.

 

I've had my eye on this unit from Aleratec, called the RoboRacer: http://www.buyaleratec.com/aldvdcdrolsf.html

 

I'm trying to find out if the auto loading/ejecting mechanism is purly mechanical and is actuated by the cycling of the tray or if there is a command sent from the PC. If it's mechanical, I would think ImgBurn *might* work. The only issue I forsee is that ImgBurn waits for the user to load the next disc. If it could be put on a timer, AND the load/eject is mechanical, then it would work.

 

As it is now, I'm content in loading and unloading manually. I have my kids trained that if they see the tray sitting open with a disc in it, take it out and put it on the gray spindle and take a blank from the black spindle and close the tray.

 

Maybe I'll design my own loader ...

[bhoar]

The ONLY reason I haven't purchased a duplicator is because I'm afraid of the software to drive it. I've jobbed out some of my duplication work to a third party who uses a large tower system with a built in HD. Supposedly, it makes an exact copy of the master disc, and maybe so. But the quality of the burn is very inconsistant. I'm losing money haveing to re-burn DVDs as replacements, but I've NEVER made a bad DVD using ImgBurn.

 

So if I could find a robotic system which would work with ImgBurn I'd buy it in a New York minute.

 

I've had my eye on this unit from Aleratec, called the RoboRacer: http://www.buyaleratec.com/aldvdcdrolsf.html

 

I'm trying to find out if the auto loading/ejecting mechanism is purly mechanical and is actuated by the cycling of the tray or if there is a command sent from the PC. If it's mechanical, I would think ImgBurn *might* work. The only issue I forsee is that ImgBurn waits for the user to load the next disc. If it could be put on a timer, AND the load/eject is mechanical, then it would work.

 

As it is now, I'm content in loading and unloading manually. I have my kids trained that if they see the tray sitting open with a disc in it, take it out and put it on the gray spindle and take a blank from the black spindle and close the tray.

 

Thanks for asking that question, as I'd been curious about the robo racer and the other aleratec robots as well. It got me thinking to go look over at the aleratec site for drivers/software for clues regarding the robot control...but there weren't any downloads. There was, however, a knowledgebase article: http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.ACCT17....f?category=165

 

So...it turns out it is a serial connected (well, USB to serial anyway) robot. That it, it takes commands regarding load, unload and reject (as well as others) via the serial port.

 

Just the kind of things I use my Universal Loader CLI scripts for (e.g to create robot drivers for dbpoweramp's batch ripper). I could probably code up a batch file pretty quickly to unload/load whenever the tray opened for longer than xx seconds, even if IMGBurn didn't support the robot.

 

Maybe I'll design my own loader ...

 

That'd be creating more complex problems to solve a simple problem.

 

-brendan

 

PS - the one snag you might run into with the unit is that it *appears* that the tray hardware has been customized so it might be difficult/impossible to put a different optical drive in the unit. Might want to also look at the LS version of their three disc stack robot as well (that's also a peripheral and if the robo racer is serial connected, so might this one be).

Edited July 31, 2008 by bhoar

[bhoar]

Looks like aleratec OEM's that hardware unit. Other companies do as well (though with a smaller output bin), e.g.:

 

$625 - http://www.checkoutstore.com/ProductDetail...uctCode=RE100PC

$595 - http://www.longselectronics.com/product.as...p;id=RECRX100PC

 

-brendan

[bhoar]

Looks like the robo racer and the recordex rx-100pc are both originally made by these guys: http://www.dexpreso.com/index.htm

 

I've sent them email asking for any available documentation on the command set, to get an idea of how easy it would be to support.

 

-brendan

[bhoar]

Looks like aleratec OEM's that hardware unit. Other companies do as well (though with a smaller output bin), e.g.:

 

Correction:

 

It looks like the units often come with two output bins, though I can't guarantee they do that under all labels (they do under the dexpress label). One is smaller, for table-top use. One is larger for over-the-edge-of-table use.

 

-brendan

[bhoar]

So if I could find a robotic system which would work with ImgBurn I'd buy it in a New York minute.

 

I've had my eye on this unit from Aleratec, called the RoboRacer: http://www.buyaleratec.com/aldvdcdrolsf.html

 

dt - I acquired one of these (a refurb) Wednesday and wrote a "bare metal" driver for it for dbpoweramp last night.

 

The software the comes with it is pretty simple and has two modes:

 

1. Burning mode, which takes a disc image and burns it. Not sure if it uses its own burning engine or if it uses the Nero SDK.

2. Lightscribe mode, which automates Nero to print multiple lightscribe labels.

 

The app uses the SDK sourced from the dexpreso people, but branded for Aleratec.

 

What would be nice would be something you could run that would eject the old and load the new disc every time the tray was opened (for > 10 or so seconds to allow for tray cycle before verify). This would work for both ImgBurn and iTunes. I'll see what I can do if you're interested.

 

-brendan