Announcing microCTRL

I’ve released a new product line I’m calling microCTRL. This product line was birthed by the need to update my automatic lights to something more modern using mesh. This got the wheels turning and I decided to make an entirely new product line that to start with includes lights and a power switch.

If you’re at all familiar with home automation in real life, I’m basically designing microCTRL to be home automation for your virtual life. The initial release of these products is fairly basic, yet quite customizable. I’m hoping to add more products in the future and add more to the control and automation aspects.

You can view and play with these new products at our main store in Lionheart.

If you’re a previous owner of an Automatic Box Light or Automatic Disc Light, use a CasperVend redelivery terminal or the SL Marketplace to redeliver these items to get their microCTRL replacements at no charge.

SL Marketplace listings:
Power Switch
Recessed Light
Shop Light

 

Elevators updated to 2.7.0

Updated script package to 2.7.0:

  • The “experimental” animation based movement system from the previous version is now the only supported movement system. The old physics-based system is now considered legacy.
    • A legacy install disk for 2.6.2 with “real” physics will be included but no longer updated or supported.
  • Fixed an issue where systems that had many doors (10+) would fail to have all their scripts updated/installed by the install disk. If you have a system with many doors, I recommend running the update process to 2.7.0 twice to hit everything.
  • Fixed an edge case where the car doors would close if the elevator was put into maintenance mode while the doors were already open.
  • Added the ability to automatically remove unused floor buttons from the elevator car.
    • After installing the car, bring up the car menu (touch the panel behind the buttons) and choose Unlink from the menu. Extra buttons will be unlinked and then deleted.
  • Fixed an edge case where the car would throw an error about animating linksets with prim equivelancy. This error only seemed to happen when installing scripts and didn’t break anything.

 

Updated install disk to 2.4.1:

  • Cleaned up a bit of code and recompiled it using some new tools. Disk should be functionally the same.

 

Updated all shells to 2.7.0:

  • Updated all proxy scripts to be more reliable with regard to an update disk loading scripts into many objects.
  • Cars and doors have a new mesh shipping crate (looks the same, but only 1 LI).

 

Notes about mesh:
Gen2 was designed to use many different prims for different purposes and has many scripts that need to be inside some of these prims, such as the scripts for the buttons inside the car. Thus, it makes it difficult to convert components of a Gen2 elevator system to mesh and still retain functionality.
I’ve experimented with converting a Rhino elevator car to mesh and reduced the land impact from 28 to 20 with all 16 floor buttons. The problem is that when the car moves, it turns solid (convex hull) and then you can’t enter it or be inside of it. If you want to experiment with making your own mesh car (you can re-use the call panel and buttons and doors from one of my shells), you’ll have to use prims for most of it, and detail it with mesh perhaps. But as of right now it doesn’t seem to be straight forward to convert the old prim cars to mesh and have them work properly.

 

Visual Studio Code Guide

Looking to configure Visual Studio Code in Windows for use with LSL scripts for Second Life? I’ve created a guide that you can find here that will lay the foundation for configuring VS Code, along with using a couple external tools for preprocessing and optimizing your LSL scripts.

New Web Server

Welcome to AWS! I’ve moved Union Micro to a new web server, mostly because I was bored and wanted to try something new. Also, if I ever get a small amount of ambition and want to do any web-services in-world, this system is scalable. There’s also a possibility I’ve broken some links but I tried not to. You should be able to find anything via the navigation bar at the top.

I’ve also updated the FAQ with some more current information.

We’re Back!

I’m back… again! I had to block out some time in order to update a lot of my products to a new system since HippoTech had server issues and basically the entire back end of Union Micro disappeared.

I’ve spent the last weekend updating mainly my gen2 elevators and a couple other of my recent products to work with CasperUpdate. This also means I’ve started using CasperVend.

What does this mean for you? Not much unless you’re looking for product updates. All SL Marketplace purchases have been imported into CasperVend, so you can use any CasperVend vendor to get your products redelivered (touch a vendor and choose redeliver from the menu). I’ve also updated the Union Micro Affiliate Kit with the new vendors so feel free to use those for purchases and re-deliveries as well.

Your current products will no longer update as there’s no longer a server to request updates from (see HippoTech blog linked above). You MUST acquire a newer version either via automated re-delivery or by contacting me for a new version. This is a pain, but these are the cards we were dealt!

If you’ve purchased your items in-world before March 25th, 2018, your updates will need to be manually delivered as records of these sales are gone. Just contact me (Stylez Gomez) in-world and I’ll try and help you out. You may be requested to rez a copy of your product as proof. After receiving the new version, they will auto-update via CasperUpdate.

These are the products that currently support CasperUpdate :

  • All gen2 elevator products
  • Affiliate Kit
  • Escalator Kit
  • SpeakTech

One of my next steps may be to re-establish a store in-world but I’m still not sure about that yet, so stay tuned.

 

Elevator Update 2.6.2 Available

March 24, 2018

Replaced update system in shipping crates with CasperUpdate due to the closure of HippoTech. This also means that if you’ve purchased your elevator (or many other Union Micro products) in-world before March 24, 2018, you will not be able to automatically check for and receive updates as your current crates are trying to check HippoUpdate for updates which is now offline. You’ll have to contact Stylez Gomez to arrange for a manual update. I’ll post more info on Twitter (@UnionMicro) or UnionMicro.net when I have an update path for manual updates.

No elevator functionality was changed. I don’t foresee any more gen2 updates coming but I want to be ready in-case a change in SL breaks something and I have to push out an update.

February 2, 2014

  • Updated script package to 2.6.2:
    • Added a new disk to the package that contains a set of experimental scripts (2.6.2e).
      • These scripts should be considered EXPERIMENTAL and although they have been tested it’s impossible for us to test under all possible scenarios. It’s suggested that you rez a fresh elevator system and test it yourself before using it on a production system.
      • Our mesh testing was limited but successful. If you’d like to create a mesh elevator you will have to use the panel and buttons from an existing non-mesh default elevator. Gen2 is designed for use with buttons being separate prims (although you can make each button a mesh if you want). Gen3 will be more efficient with the call panel.
      • Converted the movement engine of elevator car to the engine that will be used in our Gen3 elevators.
        • Movement is now animation based and not physics based.
        • Allows for the usage of mesh objects.
        • No gaps required around the elevator car anymore.
        • Smoother and more reliable movement.
      • Removed much code from _car_main used for keeping the physics engine in check.
      • Added notecard options to allow the end-user to control the physics shape of the root and child prims (see below). Most users should not need to use these options.
  • “Vanilla” scripts updated to facilitate going back and forth from experimental to vanilla scripts.
    • Vanilla scripts are considered to be the normal scripts which use the older physics based movement (the engine which all of our elevators used up until this point).
    • Scripts will set all prims in the object to PRIM_PHYSICS_SHAPE_PRIM. If you somehow have a mesh working with 2.6.1 then don’t update to vanilla 2.6.2 (use experimental scripts instead).

Main Store Closed

Due to lack of time, interest, and motivation I’ve decided to close the main store. Union Micro has existed in Second Life in some form or another since 2004 but over the last couple years has become stagnant.

Union Micro itself has not closed, just the main store (basically the only in-world presence). I’ve moved my vendor servers to another location as well us all product update servers so they will continue to function. Products will be able to be purchased via the SL Marketplace and in-world affiliate vendors run by third-parties. Affiliate vendors can be purchased for L$1 on the SL Marketplace.

Any builders that have affiliate vendors for Elevator Unlockers should continue to function, but if you’re sending your clients to our shop to buy an Unlocker you’ll have to either put up an affiliate or direct them to the SL Marketplace. I believe there is an affiliate vendor included with the Builder’s Script Pack.

I will continue to provide critical updates to the gen 2 elevators for the foreseeable future but they’re in general very stable as long as Linden Lab doesn’t do anything drastic to the simulators.

Technical support is now only provided via the in-world “Union Micro Support” group and the GetSatisfaction website (choose Customer Service under the Support menu at the top of this website).

Union Micro may return some day with an official in-world store but at this moment I’m holding out hope for Second Life 2.0 for our return.

I’ll create a section on this site or update this post with links to in-world affiliates where you can purchase products in-world and see product demos. If there’s nothing on this page, there’s likely no affiliates to list.

Thank you all for making Union Micro what it is for the past ten years.

Sliding Doors Update and Website Tweaks

I’ve done a few tweaks to the Automatic Sliding Door product. The chat commands in the sensor now use the doorChannel variable as was originally intended, channels are now negative by default, and doors will only listen to sensors owned by the same owner. Since there’s no auto update feature in this product and it’s basically a freebie I’ve included it with the group notice sent earlier today! If you’re not in the group you can request an update from the delivery terminal at Union Micro or join the group at open the past notices and get the update there. Please don’t IM me asking for updates as that would be overwhelming.

I’ve also added a Get Satisfaction widget to our customer support section of the website. This allows you to post and view support requests without leaving this site via your free Get Satisfaction account. Apologies to anyone who posted questions there recently that went unanswered – I think the email notifications were getting filtered into my spam so I just figured no one was posting any questions.

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