PAS Levels Not Working

[E-Simon]

Thanks Amberwolf.
I tried disconnecting the TS today. As predicted - no assistance at all, regardless of the settings. So the cadence sensor isn't working at all. I guess it could be "simple" hardware issue.. like a loose connector... or it might be the firmware. Hard to know. And it's hard to check out the hardware side because I have no idea where the sensor is or how to check it. I wondered if, as you alluded to, it might be in the bottom bracket along with the torque sensor, but I checked my (cadence-only) Comfort Cruiser and I see no cables coming from that area. And they're very similar designs overall.

 

[amberwolf]

I tried disconnecting the TS today. As predicted - no assistance at all, regardless of the settings. So the cadence sensor isn't working at all.

Or the system requires the torque sensor to be active for it to work, even if it is designed to be ignoring the readings in some modes, it might still require there to *be* readings. (part of a different loop in the software, checking for hardware problems).

Is the TS a separate part from the cadence sensor? That specifically uses it's own completely separate connector? If not, disconnecting the TS also disconnects the cadence sensor, which would give the result you see.

If you don't know, you'd have to trace it all out to find out where things are physically located, and what they are physically wired up to, to determine this.

Unfortunately you can't necessarily compare to a different version of the bike to determine it, as they may use completely different sensor designs (and possibly even placements), even if the rest of the design is quite similar.

 

[E-Simon]

Hi again, Amberwolf.

I was wrong about the Comfort Cruiser. Closer inspection does reveal a cable coming out of the bottom bracket, and this must be the cadence sensor. There is only one cable coming from the same place on the Interceptor, but it has 5 pin connectors, so I would think it likely that it supports both censors. In other words, you were right, of course, about the consequences of disconnecting the TS, as does so disconnects the cadence too.

I have wondered about trying to get into the bottom bracket to inspect the cadence sensor, but 1: I wouldn't really know what to look for and 2: I understand cadence sensors to be pretty simple devices, so I would presume the risk of failure to be low. Does that sound reasonable.

One thing I discovered today is that the LCD can display the software versions of both the display (Bigstone C500B) and the controller. I don't know if it's significant, but the LCD software version shows as L2 100:01 while the controller version shows as being C0 000:00, which I thought was a bit odd.

 

[amberwolf]

I don't know anything about their software, but I have seen various devices composed of mulitple interdependent but separate units that have different firmware "version numbers" on each unit. Presumably there are different developers (or at least projects) for each unit (display, controller, etc) and they simply have a compatiblity requirements table that ensures that data passed from one to the other is always correctly interpreted regardless of version, within some subset of versions. At some point the table itself would have to change to support some upgrade or feature, and then versions of either unit beyond that point would't be backward compatible with either of the previous branches.

(this is how it has worked with, for instance, VST synths and effects and various host softwares, though those are a completley different category than what this thread is about)

 

[amberwolf]

It is pretty unlikely for the cadence sensor to fail (the TS is more complicated and more likely to have a failure....plus it is likely that the system requires both TS and C sensors to be outputting valid data for the system to allow the bike to operate (or at least not to provide any error messages).

A visual inspection of sensors is not likely to reveal any issues unless there is significant obvious physical damage of some type, and that would probably show you a problem / error code on the display, and/or prevent the bike from operating.

To see if sensors are operating correctly, you'd have to actually test them which would mean exposing the wiring to them and penetrating the wiring with test leads (or building an extension harness that goes between the bike connectors to give you exposed wiring for test lead access without damaging the actual bike wiring).

It's not likely to show you anything useful, for all the effort of doing it (as even if you get the signals to show up, you don't ahve anything to compare them to).

 

[E-Simon]

Ahh so you're a musician too? I know what you mean about plugin versions. The same thing happens, of course, with OS updates (particularly with Apple it seems), but that's a whole different thing.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions about checking the sensor itself.

What I found interesting about the software version for the controller is that it shows it all as zeros. That seems odd to me. I found an undated video that demonstrates how to check the versions, and in that example the controller version shows as being C3 202:00, which seems a bit more reasonable. Oh well, I'll send this info to Pedego support and cross my fingers that it might show something helpful.

 

[amberwolf]

Ahh so you're a musician too?

I'm not sure "musician" applies; perhaps "composer" might; sound-musher could be more appropriate. :lol: I wouldn't say anything I do is great, but some of it is good enough to listen to.

I use an ancient version of SONAR (was a prolific beta tester for Cakewalk a couple of decades back, earning each new version as they came up with them, until life intervened). There's a thread around here about my "studio" and various technical things for and about it, since there have been a few interested people now and then; includes some descriptions of my processes and such (which, like all of my "songs" (and every other project I do including my bikes/trikes) are constantly evolving as I discover new things).

There's some links to my stuff in my signature; the most recent three are these, newest at the top (but probably the best at the bottom):
Broken Pieces of Yesterday
The Discernment of Candor
Convocation of Lies


Do you have anything of yours up anywhere?

 

[E-Simon]

Great sounds, and definitely very film-appropriate! I've never done anything close to that standard!

I have just been struggling to recall the name of the first DAW I used, but early Cakewalk was the second - probably around the time you were beta testing. Never did get to Sonar as I kinda quantum leapt to Nuendo for a while, before getting all excited about Reaper for a year or so.

I ended up moving into the whole Apple Mac thing about 10 years ago - largely because of my job (it's a long story) and am now firmly locked into Logic Pro. Apple's got me by the balls with it I'm afraid. :-(

As for my material, I've dabbled in many areas over the years, but I haven't done much overall.

Just remembered... it was Cool Tracks Pro - way before Adobe bought it out and vanished it. That was my first.

So I have a few older recordings on Soundclick, but this is my most recent. It's something I wrote for my elder daughter's wedding (my younger daughter sang BVs on it. (Now I have to finish recording the one I did for my younger daughter's wedding LOL)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10UUNIC5wB7kCJ567ZvZi_5pQDczYH8no/view?usp=sharing

 

[amberwolf]

Great sounds, and definitely very film-appropriate! I've never done anything close to that standard!

Thanks. It's not great, but it's listenable; I have fun making these, and I learn something new almost every "song".

I do other more "traditional" styles like Caninical Hagiography here: https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/caninical-hagiography and Jennifer Parts 1&2 here: https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/jennifer-parts-1-2 , and other stuff of various types also on those pages. Everything on the Bandcamp site is fairly "completed", though I'm always tweaking things....

The Soundclick pages have more types of stuff, but much of it is fairly raw rather than edited like all the stuff I've linked here and above. I don't have enough time to "finish" everything I create (both in music and every other project I do), so I keep whittling the ones that most inspire me, whenever I have something in my head to do with them. Sometimes something gets left the way it came out because I just don't know how to do what I want to do with it, or I'm incapable of doing it (like I can't play a certain part on a certain instrument, and don't know how to manually draw it in, etc).

(I use soundclick to hold my experiments because hardly anyone ever visits that site anyway (I might get a listen every few weeks, yet just that one listen can push one of my songs up several dozen places in the "main" charts, even into the top 100, which would not be possible if there were actually any real traffic there.)

I have just been struggling to recall the name of the first DAW I used, but early Cakewalk was the second - probably around the time you were beta testing. Never did get to Sonar as I kinda quantum leapt to Nuendo for a while, before getting all excited about Reaper for a year or so.

The only ones I've used were Trax and Bars&PipesPro (both Amiga), then moved to Windows with CoolEdit and then CoolEditPro along with Cakewalk Pro Audio 6 (using CEP to do the audio editing because CPA6 barely had any ability to do that), then I got invited for CW beta testing because of my detailed posts/reports/helping out on the old CW newsgroup. During the beta testing I used all the versions from CPA8 thru SONAR 8 Producer Edition (which I'm still using); taht's when I dropped out of testing due to life stuff.

I did also use Brainspawn's Forte, which is a virtual rack for synths and effects and stuff; basically just a big host with ins and outs; no sequencer/etc in it. Can't get it to work right on Windows10 though, which is a shame--it let me host stuff that doesn't work right in SONAR (they use different VST hosting methods, so sometimes something works in one but not the other), and use virtual midi and audio cables to connect them...and also to use whole other computers to host CPU-hog stuff and then send the audio back into the SONAR computer.

There was something else too but I can't remember what it was now.

I ended up moving into the whole Apple Mac thing about 10 years ago - largely because of my job (it's a long story) and am now firmly locked into Logic Pro. Apple's got me by the balls with it I'm afraid. :-(

The only apple music stuff I worked with was Cakewalk's only foray into that, called Metro. I didn't like it much, just didn't have a workflow I could deal with. (I was the Apple tech at two of the CompUSAs around here early this century, but haven't done much with Apple anything in quite a long time).

I looked at Logic a while back but never tried it out, since all my computers are Windows and I didn't want to deal with emulator/hackintosh stuff.

Have considered looking at Cubase to be able to use the many newer VSTs that simply don't work in my old SONAR...not gotten around to it yet.

As for my material, I've dabbled in many areas over the years, but I haven't done much overall.

Just remembered... it was Cool Tracks Pro - way before Adobe bought it out and vanished it. That was my first.

Probably CoolEdit Pro; I used that too (the company, Syntrillium, was easy to talk to about bugs and feature requests, though they never got the new version out before they got bought out...same thing that happened to Bars&Pipes on the Amiga--they were making a Windows version, and Microsoft bought them and then nuked the whole thing. (which is why I went with Cakewalk on Windows).

So I have a few older recordings on Soundclick, but this is my most recent. It's something I wrote for my elder daughter's wedding (my younger daughter sang BVs on it. (Now I have to finish recording the one I did for my younger daughter's wedding LOL)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10UUNIC5wB7kCJ567ZvZi_5pQDczYH8no/view?usp=sharing

You definitely play and sing better than I do, and your mix is better, too.

I couldn't find your soundclick page (trying on variations of "simon"); nothing that seemed like the same style, anyway.

 

[E-Simon]

Haha... I love how this thread has got completely off-topic. I assume the moderators around here aren't too pedantic about this kind thing.

Yeah, sorry, CoolEdit and then CoolEdit Pro. The original had a very cool brainwave entrainment feature that was easy to use and that I had a lot of fun with, but it was removed later (around when Adobe got involved, I think?). I loved that wee program. It was basic, but it was free and handled audio the best of anything else I'd tried at the time. I really can't recall what I was using for MIDI at the time, but I know it was pretty basic and didn't do audio.

This is my SoundClick link: https://www.soundclick.com/artist/default.cfm?bandID=32185&content=songs
There's a (mostly) instrumental number there called Promise Bay that was possibly the first full recording I ever did with CoolEdit back in the day. If you bother listening to any of the other stuff there you'll quickly understand what I mean about just dabbling in various styles. I listen to a lot of jazz, but I'm not good enough to play it. I think people like Sting and Peter Gabriel have influenced my approach.

I'm actually supposed to be cooking dinner here right now, but I'll be checking out your other material a bit later on.

PS. Here's why I'm a Logic addict in spite of my long-time aversion to the Apple corporate ethos: It's got a reasonably (to me) intuitive workflow. It comes with a comprehensive range of very high quality plugins - both instruments and effects. And it costs a fraction of anything else comparable.

 

[E-HP]

Haha... I love how this thread has got completely off-topic. I assume the moderators around here aren't too pedantic about this kind thing.

amberwolf is a global moderator.

 

[amberwolf]

Haha... I love how this thread has got completely off-topic. I assume the moderators around here aren't too pedantic about this kind thing.

The only thing we tend to be picky about is spam, and trolls. (and the occasional "impatient n00b" that posts a bunch of threads for the same thing either immediately or within an hour or two, or posts the same thing in a bunch of unrelated threads, etc...but it's simple enough to concatenate all those into just one thread for their stuff when that happens).

There are times when OT is not really appropriate, but that's generally up to the various people posting in the thread to decide and complain about, at which point it can be split off to a different thread (whcih we can do with this discussion if you prefer).

Yeah, sorry, CoolEdit and then CoolEdit Pro. The original had a very cool brainwave entrainment feature that was easy to use and that I had a lot of fun with, but it was removed later (around when Adobe got involved, I think?). I loved that wee program. It was basic, but it was free and handled audio the best of anything else I'd tried at the time. I really can't recall what I was using for MIDI at the time, but I know it was pretty basic and didn't do audio.

CE also had a fast-fourier transform (FFT) function to remove noise that worked REALLY well. I still keep it around for that. (Audacity has one but it doesn't work nearly as well (tends to add aliasing)).

This is my SoundClick link: https://www.soundclick.com/artist/default.cfm?bandID=32185&content=songs
There's a (mostly) instrumental number there called Promise Bay that was possibly the first full recording I ever did with CoolEdit back in the day. If you bother listening to any of the other stuff there you'll quickly understand what I mean about just dabbling in various styles. I listen to a lot of jazz, but I'm not good enough to play it. I think people like Sting and Peter Gabriel have influenced my approach.

Most of the things I really love I can't play...but sometimes I can "build" it note by note. Sometimes I can almost play it and then edit it till it's close enough. Except for a very few pieces, I start with MIDI and then generate audio I can edit from there. Only in the last few years have I done any real audio track recording of physical instruments (though I often have created sounds, especially percussive, by recording different noises around me (including dog sounds like hungry-tummy growls :lol: )

You'll probably hear the "close enough" in various stuff on those sites. (The Uncommon Ground album on Bandcamp has a variety of styles in it, for instance, and not enough editing in several of them; I didn't know enough to do it then (1996)).


I haven't gotten very far on your music list yet (not playing in order), but I could hear where some of the stuff in Instrumental Ideas could go from where it starts(not sure I could take it there, but I can hear it anyway). I doubt it is where you would intend it to go. (some of it I "hear" going into an aggressive synth or electric guitar sound, where it starts to build, more towards the end of the particular section of the first two, but in several places in the last one).

I like Soundscape; do you actually play the sitar, or is it a synth? Also, at least towards the end I can hear the AudioNerdz Delay Lama in there--it's a neat synth; hard to find a place for in most stuff, but it has it's uses (I wish it had CC or NRPN control of all the modulations it can do, but some of them are only on-screen-by-mouse. ) I used it to generate the original beginning of The Discernment of Candor (don't recall if that is still present on the latest version on Soundclick, but it will be there in the earlier ones there; at some point I took it out because the few people that listened to it that commented said it was wierd and out of place). There is also an underlying pair of tracks that use DL to create harmony and discordance with other parts in different places in the song.

I also like Pilgrimage, and I like the instrumental start of Too Much Crying; I like that style too.

PS. Here's why I'm a Logic addict in spite of my long-time aversion to the Apple corporate ethos: It's got a reasonably (to me) intuitive workflow. It comes with a comprehensive range of very high quality plugins - both instruments and effects. And it costs a fraction of anything else comparable.

Reasonable. I used SONAR mostly because I'd already been using Cakewalk, then got SONAR "free" for the time spent beta testing each version....I couldn't have afforded to buy them. (not for a hobby that I love but will never make money at).

Unfortunately Cakewalk was bought first by Roland and then by Gibson...then Gibson just nuked the company entirely instead of selling it off. Some other place called Bandlab now puts out a version of SONAR X for free; I have to wait till I have another machine to try it on, because I can't risk messing up any of my existing SONAR setup (it's a huge PITA to fix VST problems caused by updates/new versions/etc of Cakewalk's VST adapter).

 

[E-Simon]

I know what you mean about "upgrades" and all the hassles involved. I'm several versions of Mac OS behind and intend to stay that way for as long as possible, even if it does mean missing out on a few app upgrades. I often wonder how much time and money is lost in this world through individuals and corporations having to adapt to new (and often largely pointless) so-called "upgrades" of apps and operating systems.

I had a listen to those other music links you posted. I especially like Jennifer, Parts 1&2. It's atmospheric and textured, and these are two qualities I tend to gravitate towards for my own listening. Are those piano parts all your own playing?

 

[Mclewis1]

A couple of on topic comments ...

From reading a bunch of comments over the years (so no direct experience) it appears the most common failure points for an issue like this are:

- frayed cable at the point exiting the BB shell. This is often a short with the sharp edge of the hole in the BB, and in extreme conditions a completely severed cable. You often need to see the cable from both sides (so removing the axle from the BB shell is usually needed). If it's just a short you may find moving it around (when turning the bike over, etc.) removes the problem only to have it return later when riding, so take a really close look at the condition of the cable around the opening.

- water incursion in the BB leading to a failure of the strain sensor used for the torque measurement. These sensors are often similar to the hall sensors used to measure rotation in many motors, they'll have a supply voltage, ground and at least one signal connection. Removing the axle with the torque/cadence sensors, cleaning it up a bit then trying it out on the bench will usually tell you a lot about what's going on. Unfortunately you may also have to remove the external connector on the cabling if you want to completely remove it all from the BB shell ... so sometimes the "bench" is just holding it in your hand next to the bike when it's upside down. You may also need to put the crank arms back onto the axle temporarily to provide enough torque to get a good range of signal from the torque sensor. For those who are really delving into the operation of the torque sensor an oscilloscope is often used but for simple troubleshooting a multi meter should show you enough from the change in voltages.

 

[E-Simon]

A couple of on topic comments ...

Thanks for your thoughts, McLewis. Just to clarify, though, since my original post I have determined that the torque sensor is actually working as it should. Because of my inexperience with torque sensors, the general condition of my legs and having only ridden cadence sensor bikes, I simply hadn't realised just how hard I needed to pedal to get the torque sensor to kick in. Embarrassing. :lol:

It is actually the cadence sensor that isn't working. It is supposed to kick in when I turn TS off on the LCD display, but it doesn't. Instead, the bike just continues to operate in TS mode. It's almost like the LCD isn't talking to the controller. (The reason Level 5 "works" so powerfully, I have come to realise, is that even in TS mode, Level 5 is supposed to operate in cadence mode.

So the fact that torque sensor mode is working, and that Level 5 operates in cadence mode would seem to indicate that the two sensors in the BB are working as they should.

What I am trying to achieve now is to get the bike working fully in cadence mode.

 

[amberwolf]

I know what you mean about "upgrades" and all the hassles involved. I'm several versions of Mac OS behind and intend to stay that way for as long as possible, even if it does mean missing out on a few app upgrades. I often wonder how much time and money is lost in this world through individuals and corporations having to adapt to new (and often largely pointless) so-called "upgrades" of apps and operating systems.

I used WindowsXP for so long that I still prefer it; my main music desktop/tower system still uses it (but has a hardware issue that will cause me to have to resetup everything on it to fix it...so I haven't used it in quite a while as it is weeks of work to do). been using a Windows10 laptop for stuff for a few years now; I'd rather use XP on it but there's no drivers for most of it's hardware for XP so I can't.

I had a listen to those other music links you posted. I especially like Jennifer, Parts 1&2. It's atmospheric and textured, and these are two qualities I tend to gravitate towards for my own listening.

Same for me, though I often like rhythmic stuff (I frequently play to delays setup for syncopation or other effects). I have hundreds of hours of old cassette tapes and reel-to-reel recordings of things I created before I had computers to work with, that will probably never get transcribed to computer files (if they're even still playable after decades), almost all of which is stuff like that (but completely unedited as I had no way to do so, and I don't know what I played; I can't tell what notes are being played by listening, only whether they are in tune with each other or discordant).

I often play piano (or other) stuff either on the real piano or on the keyboard that I don't even end up recording, because for everyone that ever hears it (that tells me anything) they just get bored. But I like it....

Are those piano parts all your own playing?

Yes; like almost everything I do, it's just made up as I go along, my brain hears a sound and makes my fingers follow a path; it's like sculpting with sounds to me. (I'm not a musician, and can't actually "play" instruments like a normal real person.) With most of my stuff, I will play the part I can play that I hear on the first pass, then if there is more I will go back for another pass and add more notes on that sound, and then I will edit out stuff that doesn't belong there, and fix timing if needed (if I can figure out what it is supposed to be...sometimes it's wierd and I can't fix it).

It's been almost three decades so I can't remember exactly with J,P1&2, but I probably recorded most of the left and righthand together, then added second tracks with more notes I couldn't hit at the same time, and perhaps a third pass for the rest. It's very likely that the two halves were made at different "sessions", possibly months or more apart.

I can't check because I don't have those files on the computer, because they were all done in the built-in sequencer of the Ensoniq EPS16+ and/or ASR88, which is a huge PITA to edit with..and there are no dates/times on any files since it doesn't have a clock. Almost everything on the Uncommon Ground album was done on those (sometimes using other external MIDI gear like the Yamaha TG33), as this was before I'd ever heard of softsynths (VST/etc) (possibly before those existed). Some of the songs on there were even first created at science-fiction conventions (Leprecon, Coppercon, GallifreyOne, etc) where for quite a few years I used to play at the consuite/hospitality rooms once the regular convention programming ended for the day, or when it was not interesting to me. Most of the editing might've been done there, too, but more likely later at home as the Ensoniq editor is tedious and time-consuming to use. There's no mouse, no GUI, it's a text-only "one line" display that you use four cursor buttons and a yes/no button set to edit with. :/ (but I know it by heart and could probably still use it without thinking, I spent so many hundreds of hours doing stuff with it!).