Runtime?

Sirius works on 3 AA batteries,
how long is its runtime? (in continuous ON mode)
I read that AC power adapters are available as options, unfortunately European resellers does not have this option.
What kind of power adapter I , eventually, should need?

Thanks

I've never timed battery life of any of my machines, but with some I find myself noticing how quickly their batteries flatten. With the Procyon, Proteus and Sirius I'm always somewhat surprised at how long they seem to have lasted.

With the Procyon in particular, and the others to a lesser degree, fresh 1.5V batteries are essential. Sound and light quality diminishes dramatically as the voltage drops. I have found that the best way to get value from alkaline batteries is to use them for a little while in the Procyon (etc.) before transferring them to a torch, clock or remote and putting fresh ones in the Procyon.

Sirius and Proteus use the same 7.5V/200mA adapter. I've got just the one you need in my hand right now. MindPlace was having a geographically challenged day when they shipped the Euro adapter to New Zealand :)

Cheers,
Craig

Thanks Craig,
you are always really useful!
So useful that I'll try to bother you with another question :)
Btw I promise that, when I will finally stand my hands on a mindplace device, I'll post every interesting result. (I'm an anthropologist, I'm trying to reproduce the effects I'v seen during dissociative rituals in some tribes of the Asiatic sud est).

Here the question:
have sirius unit an internal voltage regulator? (something like the LM78XX series) to accept an open wide of input voltage?
I don't have any 7.5Vadapter, but I have a lot of 9V :)

I planning an intensive use (> 5 hours per session) I definitively can't afford so much batteries :)

Hmmm. Dissociative rituals - my favourite. That's a pretty major part of my activities too. I have a series of sessions by the name "Ritual" which should be available soon. It's drawn from my experience with a variety of Western and indigenous traditions.

I don't have the information available to say yes or no to 9V adapters - hopefully Andy will have the answer.

Cheers,
Craig

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Distopia

Sirius works on 3 AA batteries,
how long is its runtime? (in continuous ON mode)
I read that AC power adapters are available as options, unfortunately European resellers does not have this option.
What kind of power adapter I , eventually, should need?

Thanks

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Hi Distopia;

There are 230v AC adapters available for Europe. Ask your dealer to order one or you can order them from mindplace.com directly. A 9v adapter would not work but you might be able to get away with a 6v adapter, but 7.5v is the correct one. Make sure the polarity is correct if you decide to not use the MP supplied adapter. You're on your own if you fry the console with a 3rd part adapter! :eek:

I'm not sure how long the Sirius will operate on batteries, but I believe it's quite a while if you have good alkalines.

-Andy.

Runtimes for the Sirius and Proteus units with 3xAA Alkaline batteries is ~50 hours total. Runtimes with Procyon is a little less, maybe ~30-40 hours.

The optional adapter that comes with Sirius and Proteus is 7.5 volt, 200ma. In each owners manual (which you can download yourself) it says you can use other adapters but that they should be rated 200-300ma, 5 to 7 volts, and plug sheath is ground. I use an old adapter I had sitting around and it works great. It is a 6 volt 300ma adapter. I had to rewire the leads to get the right polarity, pretty simple.

Cheers,
TomC

Thanks all, useful information (~30-50hours it's really a good runtime).

Craig if you are interested in dissociation probably you'll have my same needs,
asimmetrical multicolor photic stimulation.
How do you solve?

I haven't found a satisfactory way to exploit the left/right visual pathways. Anything that has the lightsource too close to the face has too much scatter to get good left/right definition. Moving lightsources away, so that they are in the true left and right visual fields, changes the mode of perception from seeing to looking.

Until I come up with something clever for visual fields, I achieve my more interesting dissociative effects by messing with the brain's tendency to count or look for patterns.

Frequency or phase differences between left and right audio channels work well.

Overall, I'm finding the effect of color very hard to nail down. My impression is that it has almost nothing to do with raw effectiveness - but influences the session's effect according to the individual's aesthetics/psychological associations.

Cheers,
Craig

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CraigT

Until I come up with something clever for visual fields,

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I plan to build my own visor. Just for this I ask so much tech information about mindplace hardware.

Quote:

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Overall, I'm finding the effect of color very hard to nail down. My impression is that it has almost nothing to do with raw effectiveness - but influences the session's effect according to the individual's aesthetics/psychological associations.

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I don't know if this is the right place, and I don't want bothering anyone so I'll try to stay short :)
Anyway, I'm co-working with a psychologist of the Mensa, you should not use colors with a focus on the psycho-emotive correlation, you should use difference in color to overload cortical processing.
Overload-->augmented synaptic discharge-->dissociation.
Try it, you will find a new word (not always a positive one) :)
If you are interested in some literature give a look (if you haven't already do) to Braid, Janet and Cheek and (for something less aging) Suzette Boon.
They will give you an huge amount of critical and fundamental information.
But probably you already know their work!

Thanks again for the info!

I'll be interested to see what you come up with for the visor - I've been experimenting with a few permutations.

Thanks for the references - I'll look into it.

Cheers,
Craig