Hi, it's Bridget. Welcome to Sunday Morning Coffee with Bridget. Today, I'm outside enjoying the summer weather and you will hear the wind. As the air element shows up and brushes up against my microphone, I know, I know. It's not always the most enjoyable listening experience. However, today's topic, oh today's topic is Senses. Sensory input, sensory information. Really starting to allow yourself to engage with your senses in a way that is positive. It's positive. It is possible to engage all of your senses in ways that are positive, healthy, and hopeful for you. Now, I know, I know.  Not the kind of deep dive into an ocean, but deep dive, nose dive, like a plane into the ground. And that is not something that is enjoyable or something that we expect or want as far as outcomes. So the intention of the senses for you and I to have this conversation together today is to encourage the connection, to allow for the connection on your terms, your terms.  Yeah, I know you.  So the mirror is looking back at me too. You have built a wall, barriers that have protected you or that you thought would keep you safe. And over time, the erosion of the wall, it starts to crumble. And there's pockets of openings and holes and gaps and you wonder, should I fill these up? What should I do at this stage? Do I need this wall? Do I need to build something new? Do I just leave it there and then I create a new fence behind that wall? I mean, how does this work? And that wall was created for a purpose with intention to protect you and keep you safe. Maybe to help you with boundaries. Do you have any boundary issues? I mean, do you? I know I do. I know I do. I know I do. I'm working on that myself. Very real, very raw, very authentic. I am working on boundaries. It is not easy. But boundaries is not a wall or a fence. It is an energetic presence. And we get to work with our senses to help us to affirm the beauty of a boundary, to empower ourselves with the boundary, to understand what boundaries mean, what they are. And this is an ambiguous thing. It's an ambiguous place to be. It's a strange new place to explore and experience.  I don't know what it is about that person, but I just, I don't like them. I just don't like them.  And they are touching your resistance, which stings. It stings, it burns, it shields up. It creates a strong reaction or response from a light little annoying trigger or a frustration or what bubbles up later in the day to you getting crabby and into a bad, bad foul mood.  You know exactly what I'm talking about, because those triggers and that resistance, that sensory information that you're picking up on, and that's related to boundaries, that's related to you needing to protect yourself in some way, shape, or form. And I'm not talking about physically. I'm talking about energetically. Although let's talk about, let's take a moment here to step back and talk about senses. I've had the most wonderful opportunity today because I chose it on a day that is presenting me with a lot of stress, a lot of emotions at the surface, a lot of the doorstep of change, and emotions are right at the surface right now. I chose, I chose to go out, leave my house, drive to the beautiful park down by the river, and walk outside. It is hot. The blaze in the sun is 90 degrees right now. It is hot. And we're talking early in the morning, okay? Like 9.30 a.m. Central Time, yeah, early, relatively speaking.  And I walked, and I drank my water, and I walked, and then I took a break. I drove to a different place, found a picnic table right next to the river. I posted on my Instagram, you can check that out, my view from my picnic table, and I journaled about the senses. So the question that came to me this morning and my morning reading for myself, my morning ritual, routine of doing a reading or connection for myself, which you can find if you're interested in those kind of videos on my fairy grasshopper YouTube, check out fairy grasshopper on my YouTube channel and you'll see that video of my morning reading. So during that connection, I received an invitation or I received my opportunity for choice to go deeper in what I felt as a bit of a resistance place. So through one of my readings for myself, I was connecting into a message of as above so below, as above so below the mirror. If you work in metaphysics at all or healing, you've heard this before, I'm sure. Well, that phrase a little bit is a trigger for me, as above so below is a trigger for me. And I know it, and I've written about it before in my journal and instead of pushing it away and adding to my little wall of resistance about this, I accepted it as an invite. So I brought my journal down by the water because water is flow and river flowing energy and water represents heart, which is empath, which is what I've been working on in senses, sensory sensitive person. So I've been talking to you about this on Sunday morning coffee. I've been talking to you about this on fairy grasshopper YouTube channel in our talk topics, lots of talk about emotions and mood and that kind of the thing. And I walked, I gave myself the opportunity to just be in nature and the elements always helpful to flow with the elements. So the wind, feeling it physically feeling it on my face, sensory response to appreciating it on my skin, which was getting wet very quickly because the sun was so strong, which I love the solar energy. So I felt that received it, appreciated it. And as that those the water just the moisture just wicked up on the top of my skin, and the wind would come by and it would just refresh me. And it was such a sweet collaboration of connection with the air, the water, the solar sun energy and my feet tapping the earth as my tennis shoes created this rhythm on the path that that paved path. It just felt so in alignment. And all of my senses were engaged. The colors were so vibrant of the green. It was just lit up. The sky so blue, it was lit up by that solar sun energy. And I just felt the flow of life through all of my senses, the physical body senses of sight, of feeling touch, I could feel my skin responding and reacting to the elements and the energy. And I could hear with my ears, my feet tapping literally tapping rhythmically tapping as I walked in a cadence on the path. And I heard birds everywhere. And off in the distance I would hear a truck kind of rumbling by on the highway on the bridge over the river. And all of it, all of it was perfect. It was perfect. And I was part of it. I was one with it. And it was one with me and it was all my senses engaged, all of them. Everything. It was wonderful. And I thought, this makes sense. This is what sensory processing means in a positive, healthy and hopeful way. This is connection. Our senses provide us with opportunities all the time for connection they do to remind us that we are already connected. We are already in rhythm, in natural rhythm. When we choose, when we make the choice, if I would not have gone on the walk this morning, my day would look very different right now. And I wouldn't be sitting and talking to you on my back deck so peaceful, filling myself with water for the graduation ceremonies later tonight in the 90 degree heat on the bright metal bleachers. And I'm bringing an umbrella. If I need the shade from the sun and I am going to appreciate the senses, I'm going to maximize the experience in positive, healthy and hopeful ways, positive inputs. I feel very relaxed right now. And that can happen at the same time. I am Clair Sentient and sensing and feeling the higher purpose of all the messages. And for me, psychically today, the message is really about connection and how our human life is built, our physical bodies are built for the connection to support the connection. Everything speaks through energetic language, including the body, including the elements, the air, including the colors, including the smell of the flowers that are blooming, the sound of the water as it's rushing over the rocks as you're walking by, the sound of the train off in the distance or the airplane above or the hustle and bustle of a traffic, a busy street, you can still feel the sensory energy of the rhythm. Find the rhythm in that beeping car and that revved up engine and it's just all a part of the bigger whole, the bigger wholeness of connection that we already belong to. It just reminds us that we are connected with life itself. Not any one person can dominate this connection. Not any one thing event activity, whether it be traumatic or blissful, defines us singularly as an independent individual as I or as we collectively in this experience. So I took the opportunity to go through my senses and I answered this question. So I'm going to share this with you because this might be something you can journal about yourself and you might find this very, very helpful, especially if you're an empath and you get overloaded with emotion. I think switching into natural nature and sensory input, whatever the situation is for you, whatever whether you are in the busy bustling city or for your out in at a park or etc. I think you can find the pattern here and the pattern, the natural rhythm will get you back into an organic understanding of connection. It will just affirm the connection that's already there, but you'll be in awareness. So you'll be able to receive that awareness of the connection. You'll be like, Oh yeah, okay, I got it. I got it. So the journal prompt that I used was as above so below, what does this mean to my mind? Because right away, my brain is my place that holds my wall, my boundaries, my barriers, and it's the most protective part of me. It's like the castle wall, right? That's that's how I connect. If you connect in a different way, you can start at a different, a different place. There's four parts that I'm going to focus on. This is what I focus on my coaching work and my intuitive coaching work, the body, mind, heart and soul, very simple, four parts, nice and balanced, honoring the four directions. You being the fifth direction, by the way, center core light spirit, that's you. So I started with my mind because I know that's where I hold my resistance very strongly. It's where most of my clients do as well, by the way, most of us do hello, yes, I think so. Yes, that's how you relate to your human life experience with your mind, right? Okay, okay, so let's start with the brain. So I'm like as above, so below, and just for a quick flash, I flashed into a little bit of some wounding around that with people who are, you know, people who I have had experience with as far as spiritual people and that come across as like mentors or like knowledgeable individuals or leaders and using it almost like a, well, this is a fact, boom, it's like boom, like putting a separation between them and myself, do you know what I mean?  That's how it felt to me. That's how as above, so below felt to me. That's interesting, isn't it? But that's how it felt to me. Like, oh, these other people are so spiritual. Oh, they know so much.  I don't trust you mentor, supposed spiritual mentor, because I can see all the stuff that you don't want. You're not working on yourself. And so therefore you're redirecting. So no, thank you. Please don't teach me what you don't know. Just be honest, Bridget, be just be honest with the people. And so sharing from this place, I stepped in as above so below, I felt it, I knew it, I could feel it and see how present it is for me right at the surface, even now. Yeah. And I shifted into my mind and I said, what does this mean to my mind? And so I ask you that as above so below, what does this mean to your mind? So you journal about that, you take that. And that's where I went to is this experience, right? It means keeping me safe. It means protection. It means separation. That something is better than below is not as good as above. So therefore, me as a human person can never be as good as above me as a spirit. Yet at the same time, here's the contrast or conflict. I am a spirit in my body. So wow, how do you come to terms with that? And so feeling into my senses, I started to feel some of what my mind hasn't been able to articulate in a sensory way. It's interesting because as I was sitting there on that picnic table, I had this awareness of one of my very personal own limitations about being called a teacher, like I didn't want to be considered. I haven't wanted to be considered a spiritual teacher. I mean, a mentor is fine. I'm fine with that term. But teacher, why when teaching really does mean so very much to me, so much if you followed my journey at all. I'm very grasshopper on my vlogs, you'll know, because I've talked about wanting to be an educator as a second career. And I've talked about it multiple times over the last 17 years. And as a part of me or a facet of me, and yet at the same time, being a teacher related to spiritual terms, it just seems so like I don't want somebody to tell me what to do. So I don't want to step into the role of telling people what to do, because that's not how we learn. We learn by experience. We learn through connection.  What does this mean to my mind and let your mind articulate and share and bring in your senses, bring in your physical understanding of your mind and how it serves you and how it's helping you stay safe and protected or providing a structure for you to operate without judging or evaluating or criticizing it. Do your best to just share without judgment, even if what you write looks bad or seems bad or feels bad and you'd never want somebody else to see that you actually thought that about that person or that experience, just let your mind be free to say and share what it needs to. And that's it. Just let it flow, sensory senses, water flow, let it flow. Then drop in to the heart. So I ask my heart, what does this mean what is the meaning of this in my heart? What does that mean for my heart? So I felt into my heart and I worked through that energetically and sensory, there's a lot of senses I came through and that that experience there. And then I dropped into my solar plexus, my spirit, and that was amazing. That was pretty like, oh, obvious. Hello, oppie. Hello, so oppie here, your spirit living in a body. Of course, it's a collaborative effort. Hello. Yes, those are just the cliff note version of that one. And then the best one of all time history was the body. Body, what does this mean? What does this mean in my body? And that is where the bouquet of senses opened up, where I looked at how lush the green grass is against the blue sky and the contrast of how I felt shaded by these huge gigantic trees and hearing the water and at the same time hearing the trucks going by on the road across the bridge over the highway. And all of these sensory things coming in at once acknowledging that the body was the vessel, the human body experience is the vessel that allows for all of the connection to be known. Good, bad, inner, outer, inside sensory responsiveness, that empath energy being processed through the body, oh yes, the overwhelm, the depression, the anxiety, the manicness, the scattered thoughts, the lack of attention, hello heart, empath energy, emotion being processed by the physical body, internally stomach aches, headaches, sore knee. For me, I get a sore knee and a sore shoulder when it's something about my past. And I haven't done actually physical yard work like I've been doing recently. My right shoulder, the past pulling back to the past, something to release usually about my, my divorce that I had several years ago or some old relationship or pattern, maybe, maybe with my parents or grandparents or that kind of a thing. It's always the past pulling me back. So I have these inner messages that my body wisdom will tell me give me cues. And it is such an incredible sensory, intuitive experience with our bodies. And yet we're so mean to our bodies. I know I am at times too, like mean by like, I choose like foods that I know aren't great for it, like too much sugar, too much caffeine, or, you know, heaven forbid, I have a slice of pizza and the bread and the cheese together. Oh, inflammation. You know how that goes for gluten people and for people like me, I'm sensitive to both dairy and gluten, which isn't, I just heard recently, that's not unusual for people who experience anxiety or depression have the same kind of body responses to gluten or dairy. Fascinating to me. Fascinating. Must be the vibration of those foods or the way that they're made, that the binding of things together so that when it comes into our body, it doesn't flow through as sweetly, softly and steadily as other things like greens, organic greens, that kind of thing, but organic greens are nature. So I mean, it's fascinating, fascinating, but the body knows. The body so knows knows that stuff, it responds to stuff externally, like the heat hot, so hot, so I'm sweating and it responds to things internally, like my emotions and oh my gosh, today, I can feel the emotions. I'm going to cry a lot as I get ready to watch the graduation. I'm going to sweat a lot as I'm sitting on that metal bleacher.  Yeah, I feel it. So our senses, our sensory connections, are priceless. They're amazing. They may feel overwhelming at times and like a detriment, something that causes us more pain, but that is only because you are overusing this incredible gift of your senses. You are overusing it. It is overflowing because it's not being shuttled into or channeled into the places where it can be of greatest good for you, the most positive, hopeful and healthy for you. That is always the goal when we're in connection and energy is flowing. It's positive, hopeful and helpful to you because it has to make sense. So the helpfulness has to make sense. Hopful has to be inspiring, has to have that spark and positive. Good. You deserve to feel better and the goal is for you to feel good. You're not going to always feel good, but if you can feel a little better than where you were at when you first connected, that is success. Check the box. You passed. Congratulations. So this is Bridget. Thanks for spending time with me today here on Sunday Morning Coffee with Bridget. This is a long one today. Cheers to you as you are listening today. Be sure to check out the comment section and share with me what was most insightful, inspiring or hopeful for you in this conversation or dialogue today. I look forward to connecting you with you on Ferry Grasshopper, my YouTube channel for all things intuitive and inspiring and as always on a both-life channel where we channel after-life celebrity guests on the weekly. Thanks so much for being here. Have a great day.


When you came to spring training it was clear you kind of tweak things a little bit at the plate. We saw that during summer camp to and we saw it on Wednesday. Can you explain why you made those adjustments in the batter's box. Um yeah the the biggest thing was I was having a hard time kind of like coiling in my swing if I didn't have it preset. So like I wanted to do like the coil but I kept doing like this. And the way I did that it didn't feel right like I like I couldn't keep anything fair right. So like physically I was trying to like do it the wrong way. And eventually I just said I'm going to just turn my front foot and just preset it. And for me it kind of helps keep me back keep me on my backside. And it just takes away the thought of doing the coil before I swing and just lets me just go up there and just wait for the pitch that I want to swing at. And and it's been good. I mean I had a long off season of adjustments and that was the biggest one I think that I made. And it's it looks uncomfortable. But it's not it's not too uncomfortable. If you've gotten used to it like I have. I was going to ask you how long did it take for that to click because it does look a little unorthodox. Yeah I mean I had I had something happened on my pictures on my phone but I had like an off season progression of how it started. You know it started by me just trying a simple little like tuck move with my shoulder and then it ended up like being evolutionized to like my whole foot being turned. And it was just the way that it felt. It felt it felt weird at first. But like the results in the cage were like like instant. And it was something that just felt felt a little awkward. But sometimes you have to get to get comfortable being uncomfortable.


Hello, Oscillator Sync here. We are back with my old friend the Ops 6 and today what I want to talk about is a particular feature of the Ops 6 that I think is maybe sometimes overlooked a little bit even though it's an incredibly powerful sound design tool and that is the operator level key track. So the operator level key track is a per operator feature and we can get to it by coming over to our level screen here. First click we get the the general level and the envelope generator and if we hit it a second time we get to this operator level key track page here. This is a feature which is lifted directly from the DX7 so like a lot of things on the DX7 can come across as a little bit esoteric and arcane but it's really not too complicated. All this is is a way for us to modulate the level of our operators whether they are working as modulators or carriers based upon what key we're pressing at any particular time. There are three controls across the top that are the ones we really kind of need to be most concerned with and the first one we'll talk about is center. So center allows us to put the center point for our modulation. Basically what that means is whatever note we set this to so I'll set it to maybe C5 here. C5 will be the level that we have our slider set to basically for that operator. Anything below C5 is going to be modulated either positively or negatively as we move further away from C5. So if we set this to maybe like minus 20% here I'll just show you here so this is doing it on the carrier here so it'll be affecting the level of our sound. So C5 here and as I move my way down you can hear that it's literally getting quieter. If I make this percentage higher maybe go to 50% you can hear that it gets quieter much quicker and it's basically silent by the time we get to the bottom there and similarly with high if we turn this up maybe turn this down and see here C5 it is as it is and as we go further away from C5 it's going to get quieter and of course if we do that with our modulators that's going to be affecting the timbre as we move across the keyboard as well. Just quickly the final two controls here allow us to change the curve from being a linear curve which means that it's going to be reducing linearly as we go down the keyboard to an exponential curve which means it's going to drop off very quickly and then once it's got to a particular point it's going to not really drop off much much more after that. So we can play with those a little bit to find exactly the right response that we want but that's all very well and good but what can we use this for what creative purpose does it have? Well there are kind of two main ways that I tend to use it. The first is to do with finessing the response of a patch to make sure that it works well across the whole of the keyboard so it sounds good no matter where you play it. The second one which is maybe a little more exciting is that it is a way to essentially create multi timbre patches on the up six and we're going to take a brief look at how we can do both of those things now. So let's start with this little patch here it's a really really simple two operator straight one-to-one FM sound pretty much just the initialized patch actually. If we go down to the bottom of the keyboard we've got that cool classic FM bass sound. Sounds like a mega drive perfect. As we go further up the keyboard this octave it's kind of working okay maybe sounds a little bit cheesy or more cheesy as we go further up and as we hit towards especially up here with the very top octave we're kind of getting to that place where people would complain about FM synths sounding glassy harsh artificial cold all of those kind of bad adjectives that FM gets lumbered with unfairly. So what can we do to make sure this patch actually works across the keyboard well I guess we could just say just play it in the lower octaves that's cheating. So this is where we can use our operator level key tracking to bring down the amount of FM being imparted on the sound by our modulator as we go higher up. So we're going to want to come across to our modulator in this patch which is operator 2 and we're here in the level eg page already. And really what we want to decide is at what point does this patch become less than great basically. I think it's probably as we sort of hit along C4 here which is the default luckily for us. So to make this patch work a little bit more sensibly in the upper octaves it really is as simple as finding that break point here and just lowering the high amount here so that as we go further up the amount of modulation is going to lessen. We probably want to come all the way up to the top here and we can literally just drop this down until we get to a sound that's more partable. Much nicer. And as we come down we find our FM bass still waiting for us down here. You can actually use your level tracking here to push the operator level beyond 100% as well. So we might decide that we want more of that FM funk happening here in the lower registers. Back to normal up here and then up here we have much less modulation and now we have a patch which does what we want across the whole range of the keyboard. Right so I have a patch set up here with a user algorithm but it's a really really basic one. Operator 1 is a sawtooth wave it's just a carrier it doesn't have a modulator it's just essentially acting like a sawtooth oscillator. Operator 2 similarly is a carrier with no modulator and it's a triangle wave so it's just basically again acting like a triangle oscillator. Operators 3 and 4 I will come back around to in due course to explain how they're set up and why it's important to have them set up that particular way and my goal here is to create two different multi-tambour patches. The first one will be a bi-tambour patch using splits with maybe a little fade between the two layers so we have different sounds on different parts of the keyboard and then we'll also make a tri-tambour patch where we have three different sounds spread across the keyboard. Now these are obviously very basic examples but hopefully you'll see how these concepts can be applied more or widely and more powerfully in other patches as well. I should also say that I am showing you this to kind of set some groundwork for another video I want to do soon which is finally getting around to talking about turning the Opsix into a drum machine and for a drum machine we're going to need different sounds across the keyboard. We'll be making use of some of these techniques. So to start with let's set up the patch so that the sawtooth wave is on the low notes and the triangle wave is on the high notes and obviously if I turn both of these up at the moment we're just going to get them blended together across the keyboard. So what we can do and this is a really simple idea is if we come over to operator one which is the one we want to have just on the low part of the keyboard and we come into the operator key trap here. I'll leave the center set to C4 at the moment and we'll turn our sawtooth up and what I want to do first of all is just create an absolute keyboard split so that everything this point down is going to be a sawtooth wave and everything this point up is going to be our triangle wave and it's a really really simple thing to do. All you need to do is choose your split point as your center and turn the high slope to 100 negative. Now when I go above that point nothing plays anymore but below here we get our sawtooth wave. Now if I turn my triangle wave up here across we're going to hear it in this higher area of the keyboard but it's also going to be playing down in the low bit as well. We want to stop that from happening. Basically play exactly the same idea we'll come on to operator two. We're going to want to set our center as being one note higher than our low note split and then just set the low to minus 100% and now triangle stops here and the sawtooth takes over. Now obviously this is a really really basic patch but you could certainly set this up with three operators on each side of the split and because of course the opposite is not just an FM synth the amount of work that you can get done with three operators is pretty immense so that's really not a restriction. You can create very very interesting bi-tambour patches that are very very powerful. Now in this case I've made it an absolute keyboard split where the sound's cut off either side but we don't have to do that. If we reduce the or rather increase the low slope on operator two to maybe like 80% and the high slope operator one similarly we get kind of a fading crossover. So we've still got a bit of sawtooth perhaps 8% that's a bit extreme that's what we'll try 70 on both like that. So we have a point here where the two are kind of fading into each other still some nice hollow triangle there and by there it's basically gone. So we can create those sort of crossovers in our keyboard split so we can have them set absolute as well. I'll leave it that way just for a moment. So bi-tambour that's really easy it gets a little bit more complicated if we want to try try a tambour but we can do it. Right so it's time to talk about these last two operators here. So operator three is a modulator and operator four is the carrier the thing that we hear but the way they are set up is that operator three is just a noise generator and operator four here is just a peaking EQ so I've just got the effect mode here I've turned this oscillator mix down so we're not hearing any of operator four's oscillator itself we're just using it as an EQ and something else which we'll get to in a moment. You can do this with the number of the effects here so the PQQ the shell VQ work fine the wave shape with stuff turned down sometimes works okay the only the other thing you can use is if you come into the filter and use a high-pass filter and set its pitch to be fixed and turned all the way down that works as well that's the way you had to do it before version two of the firmware but it's probably easier honestly if we just use a peaking EQ these days. So my goal here and it's practically a silly goal but it's an easy one to hear and it is just an example is to um sorry come back to our original patch here have our saw tooth in the bottom octave have our triangle up at the top here but for an octave in the middle around here I want to just have noise so saw at the bottom triangle at the top and then an octave in the middle with noise so the first thing we're going to do and I'll leave the noise turned down is make space for that octave in the middle so all we need to do here is come into our upper operator which is operator two and just move our center up by an octave so I'll move up to C sharp five so now we should have saw tooth silence which is where our noise is going to go and the triangle comes back in here so we're going to slip the noise in this gap here right so I'll turn up my two operators dealing in noise and indeed now we have noise in the gap here but of course we also have it everywhere else so we want to try and fix that now one way you can kind of do this if we come down to operator four which is the carrier the thing that we are hearing if we set our centre point I guess f sharp is probably where we want to set it maybe G or try G set it here and then come down to where we want the split to happen and just lower this to where we kind of can't hear it and similarly if we come up to the top here just lower it until we can't quite hear it then we have kind of created a split where we have our noise in the middle here but fortunately it drops off pretty rapidly from that centre point so it isn't really a split it's more sort of it's one note that works really and the rest of them are almost unusually quiet changing the curve could help us so the curve is a little bit more useful there but it's not perfect so obviously this is not going to create a proper split if you like where the levels of things are consistent within the area of the keyboard so let's set these back up to zero we'll just set that back to C4 now obviously it's easy enough for us to take it out of one of the sounds so if I set that to C sharp 4 as the triangle used to be and set that to 100 we've taken the noise out of the saw noise kicks in here but it's going to interrupt the triangle wave as well so this is why you have to kind of use two operators to do this so because we are essentially using operator 4 as a transparent VCA it's not affecting the sound of the incoming operator at all what that means is that we can use the modulators level scaling to deal with one half of the split and operator 4 is level scaling to deal with the other half of the split so you kind of have to waste in inverted commas an operator in order to get this three-way split but again the opposite is incredibly powerful in terms of what you can do with each operator so actually to be honest in a lot of patches you might just have an operator left over anyway that you can just use as one of these transparent VCA's so operator 4 we've set up the level scaling to deal with the top part of the split if we come to operator 3 we can now use it to deal with the top end of the split so we need to set the center to be the end of our split here so back up at C5 we leave the low set as it is but we set the high to minus 100 and now we should have sawtooth into noise into triangle a three-way multi-term brawl patch with splits obviously a pretty dumb example of one but hopefully you can see how this can be applied to your patches to get that multi-term brawlity that the Opsix apparently doesn't have anyway I hope that was useful and interesting and you can see how you might be able to apply it in your own patches if you did enjoy the video then a thumbs up like is always massively appreciated and as I mentioned I am going to take this concept and use it to turn the Opsix into a drum machine in a future video hopefully not too long from now so if that's interesting to you make sure you're subscribed to the channel as well so that you don't miss that and you know if you're feeling particularly Opsixy then maybe even click the bell so that you get the notification so you don't miss it other than that I hope you are enjoying your Opsix especially if you managed to snag one recently in the great reverb fire sale of 2022 and until next time take care bye


What's good y'all, it's ya boi Ross back again with another video. So we just finished up the live stream reaction. Um, shout out to everyone that was able to be a part of that man. The go home show for Smackdown had some interesting moments, but it definitely ended off on a strong, strong note. Uh, everyone that was probably at that show had a great time. I can definitely tell the energy was electric towards the end of the show, but we're going to get to that. But we have to talk about what went down on the show that involved the judgment day and the bloodline.  It's not even a question. And then he gets interrupted by Paul Heyman, a company by solo and, uh, Jimmy Usa, and he pretty much cuts them off. And Paul Heyman, as Paul Heyman is really good at doing, he's good at giving other wrestlers credit, putting them over. And right now he was putting over, um, he was putting over, um, LA night in the ring. You thought he was going to talk about the next big star, the next big, uh, you know, the next popular star, the next guy, uh, that's potentially maybe the face of the company was going to be solo.  You LA night, but unfortunately you're on the wrong side of things. And you know what I'm saying? You're, you're in the bloodlines way and we're going to have to take care of that.  Uh, LA night proceeds to response.  You're saying, you're saying some BS. And once again, he gets interrupted, but this time it's by Jimmy. Jimmy takes the microphone once again from Paul Heyman, Paul Heyman doesn't like it.  He's talking like he's the tribal chief once again. And he tells LA night, you're not even going to make it to pay back. And then he shoves the mic back in Paul Heyman's like chance. And he's like, oh, he was upset about that thought that was funny. So they get on a ring apron, Paul, not Paul, uh, Jimmy Uso and solo or whatnot. And then that's when John Cena comes out there to even up the odds. He's ready to fight or whatever. And then that's when they start to back down and they slow down or whatever. And they, you know, they're trying to retreat. Once John Cena evens up the odds, LA night proceeds to get on the microphone. He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.  How about you and me go one on one tonight, Jimmy? What's up? And Jimmy, and before Jimmy can really say anything, Paul Heyman was like, I don't know about that. He was malathing. I don't know about that. But Jimmy accepted it. He's like, you know what, let's go. I'm ready for it. And Paul, Paul Heyman was like, wait, what are you doing? Like, we didn't, that didn't get approved. Like, nah, I got it. I'm, he called me out. Let's do it. Once again, the story here is Jimmy has been overstepping his bounds completely since Romans being gone. That's the story they've been telling. Paul Heyman's not really liking it. Solo's just kind of there. Doesn't really have a say in it because he kind of doesn't really care. He just wants to fight. So that's the interesting dynamic they have going on with the bloodline. We know Roman Reigns is supposed to be returning next week on SmackDown. So it's going to be very interesting to see how he feels about what Jimmy's been doing. So we cut to the back. They're going back into their locker room and Jimmy is having a conversation with Paul Heyman while Solo is walking with them.  And for you to make decisions, you kind of need to be here sending shots at Romans like Romans not here. So I might as well take care of things. You know what I'm saying? Like let's get things done. And he mentions Jimmy as they get to their locker room, like who left the door open? Oh, they don't matter.   So I'm like, Oh, see what judgment days? What type of nefarious deeds and plans they're trying to cook up. We come back to commercial break. They're all standing opposite of each other. And then Rhea says, Hey, everybody leave the room except me and Paul Heyman. Everyone leaves. Solo's the last one to leave as, as, as well as Damian priests. They locked eyes looking very intense. And everyone at that point, they, they're the last to leave. And Rhea wants to have a conversation with Paul, come back to them. They're talking in the locker room and we don't know exactly what they're talking about, but like they're kind of middle conversation. And basically what Rhea is proposing is them working together again, even though we have actually seen them in this type of element. I want to say a few months back where there was some type of temporary alliance with the bloodline and judgment day. But now Rhea is the one proposing it with Paul Heyman. Paul Heyman is like, man, that's a pretty good idea. Matt, I didn't come up with that. Let me talk to my tribal chief and we'll go from there, you know, and get it approved. And then Rhea was like, Hey, I understand that. I understand this, you know, that's cool. But just know it's approved already. And he was like, wait, what are you talking about approved already? Like I got a call Roman, you know, and let him know he's my tribal chief. It's maybe approved for the judgment day, but it's not approved for us. He's like, it's like, Paul, I don't think you understand. It's approved already. I approved it and then things start to get real tense. Because he lowered his hand with the phone. Like you don't have to do that. I already approved it. And Paul's like, Hey, what are you talking about?  Crowd even said ooze and Oz. She literally said, I'm pretty much I run things now. I'm the tribal chief. I want you to acknowledge me and Paul's just confused and bewildered. Like, what are you talking about? And she elaborates that. Well, Jay went on Monday Night Raw, Monday Night Raw. Jay has already acknowledged me or what that Jay has already acknowledged me. And I think it's it's fitting that you should acknowledge me because if you don't, then there may be some issues going forward. And right now the bloodline, she knows the bloodline is not that strong. And you don't want issues with the judgment day. So I think it's in their best interest to acknowledge me. And it's clear as day. We all know it really, really runs the judgment day. And I don't think anyone has a problem with it. She is need the most over in that faction. And the fact that she's out here saying acknowledge me to Paul Haman basically saying, I run the show, you don't need to call Roman no more. And if you don't, you have some issues with us because y'all don't have the numbers anyway. Love it.  That was fantastic highlight of the show for sure. So go back to commercial break or whatever.  We don't know if he actually called Roman or whatever the case is. But he was like, you know what, that's a good idea. Let's go with it. We don't know what they plan, but we knew there was going to be some shenanigans in the main event between Jimmy and in LA night. So we have the match or whatnot, as expected, nothing too crazy. But of course, the shenanigans ensue when Solo just comes out there and attacks LA night from behind, ends up Jimmy obviously gets disqualified. They didn't care. It was about the destruction of LA night in John Cena. So of course, John Cena comes out there to help out or whatnot, but then you hear the Judgment Day music. And that's when the odds definitely tipped in bloodline Judgment Day favor. And it was very weird. They didn't surround them. Obviously, it's to, you know, get people, you know, obviously, there was more people coming through the entrance, but they didn't surround them. So it's weird. They just all walked around and lined up on one side. They would have surrounded them. They would have been screwed. But that's neither here nor there. So you have the Judgment Day and you have the bloodline members all on one side of the apron, and that's including JD. They are completely outnumbered. Then you hear Jay's music crowd goes crazy. And it's it's still not a good situation. But Jay is ready to Jay's ready to fight even Jimmy's. He's kind of backing away. He's kind of behind I don't think I may have been solo, but he's he's not up in the front talking trash. He's behind someone else. And then, of course, if Jay's going to be there, then it got to be Cody. Cody ends up getting coming down to the ring. Crowd goes crazy once again. So it's all four of the top baby faces in the company on one side of the ring going against the bloodline and Judgment Day. And the smart thing that Paul did, Paul pulled solo to the side. We're just going to sit this one out for now. And then the brawl ensues, you got people going over the top row. It was it was a beautiful sight to see crowds going crazy. We were having a good time on stream. And then there's a situation where where John Cena and solo kind of lock up. They've been teasing this and they're in the ring together. They start throwing punches, but ultimately solo's able to get the best of him or whatnot. And then we have my boy, L.A. Knight stepping up to the plate or whatnot to get the best of that situation.  So those still his character has been protected very well.  Anybody he's stepping up to, it can easily go down. But the person that really caught the most out of this bruja, this scuffle, you know, whatever you want to call it, this scuffle, this fight, whatever the person caught the worst is JD. Pretty much everyone else have been taken out with dives or whatnot. And solo was able to, you know, solo got tossed out the ring by L.A. Knight. So he didn't really take any finishing moves. He just kind of, you know, tossed out the ring, not tossed out, but clothes lined over the ring and he just kind of scurried out of frame or whatnot. But JD definitely got the beat. He received everybody's finisher and now he was like stunlocked. If you play WWE 2K, he was just stunned because he was taking everybody's finisher and he sold that crossroads like a million bucks. When Cody hit the crossroads on JD, he started, he had an extra rotation. He sold that. That was a beautiful moment. And the baby faces stand tall at the end of the show. Once again, the top baby faces in WWE right now. L.A. Knight, John Cena, obviously, Cody Rhodes and Jey Uso were all in the same ring in the crowd went crazy. Fantastic way to end off the show and hype people up for fast lane. So the question is what happens? It looks like maybe then something, maybe this team will be at war games. I'm all for it. If we got these four guys and you add a fifth, I'm all for it. That's a that's a good lineup for the war games. And most likely it'll be majority of JD of the Judgment Day members. So it's going to be interesting to see if this is going to be a potential lineup, at least on the baby face side of side of things for them for war games. But what I'm really looking forward to very interested in seeing what Roman has to say when he comes back next week, because he has to say something. You got real here saying acknowledge me Judgment Day running wreck shop because they can't because no one can stop them. Jimmy thinks he's the tribal chief now. It's a lot of things going on. Paul can't really keep control of things like it's going to be very interesting to see. And I do still feel that Jimmy and solo will lose the match. But Jimmy will get pinned. And I hope L.A. Night is the one to pin Jimmy because that's going to be very interesting if he loses again on behalf of the bloodline. Roman comes back. He's not going to be a man that solo is going to be mad at Jimmy because Jimmy's been talking big talk, but haven't been able to back it up, especially when they needed it the most. So we'll see how things play out. But comment down below. Let me know. Did you guys enjoy this smackdown? Did this go home show satisfy you enough to be even more hyped for fast lane tomorrow? But I appreciate all the love and support. Road to 150 K and I'm still young. I'm speaking to you to the rest of the world. Appreciate you all taking me to the next one. Peace.


Today, we're going to check out the MakeBlock LaserBox Pro. My name's Jim and this is the Edge of Tech. So like I said, today I'm going to be checking out the MakeBlock LaserBox Pro. It actually came in three different boxes. The laser in the bottom box, the smoke purifier in the center, and this is actually a bunch of 3mm basswood to test with. I'm going to get this thing unboxed, put up on a table so we can all see it, and then we'll go over some specs. This thing is going to be so much fun. Let's do it. Alright, I got the crate open and I just wanted to show you how this thing was packaged.  It had a wooden top that flipped down and was secured by these metal tabs. And I'm just going to open it up and that's going to reveal the laser that's right underneath. So this is sitting backwards, this is the back of the laser, that's the front of the laser. We're going to get this thing unboxed and put up on a table and let's do it. Alright, I got it out of the crate and up onto the table. And I tell you what, I should have had my wife come out because it really does take two people to do this. You should not do that by yourself. I did it by myself and I would definitely regret it. So have somebody come help you, have a buddy, a friend, a wife, a husband, anybody you got out there, help you get that out of the crate and onto the table because you don't want to break this. It is an expensive machine to break right when you get it. This LaserBox Pro came to us from Xtool. I really appreciated Xtool. Thank you guys for the opportunity to get the laser. Full disclosure, I did pay shipping and tax. Other than that, they sent me the laser for a review unit to have fun and do some videos for you guys online. They advertised the laser as a smart desktop laser. Then it's geared towards makers, small businesses, schools, hobbyists, or just about anybody who wants to get into the laser world. This thing is supposed to have a ton of technology built in and I can't wait to share it with you. But first, let's go step by step in the build process and get this thing running. I think the first thing I'm going to do is peel off this plastic and paper. It's kind of getting in my way. We'll get it off here. Next I'm going to open it up and we'll see what's inside. So we'll just lift the top here and that is really smooth and really nice. I like that a lot. As you can see, there's a bunch of foam and stuff inside here. Let's come in for a closer look. So if we take a look what's inside here, like I said, it's got really tight packed foam, which is great. There is a box here that will come out, a hose. I'm assuming this is for the ventilation part and it appears that the rest of the foam just comes right out and this is the inside of the laser without the foam so far. So I just got the foam out of the inside of the laser and as you can see, it's really nice. It's clean. It's all pretty much black on the inside there and that looks like our laser head. So this looks to be like a very nice machine on the inside. So as you can see as I pan up, it does have a camera right here and we'll go a little more into that later, but it is cool that they built a camera right into the lid. That means if I shut the lid, it's actually going to be a really good look of that build surface and that camera should do a great job for us. So inside the box you see a book, a hose, a hose clamp, a USB cable and the power cable. This is what's inside the laser. Let's pop open the book and see how we put this thing together. So going through the quick start instructions, the manual is very nice. So what I did was I opened the Smart Smoke Purifier that they sent me that does go with the LaserBox Pro. You can get this separate. As you can see, they send a separate tube with it as well. Another box and this is the actual Smart Smoke Purifier. I know you guys wanted to see this part. We'll dive into this in a little bit. So inside of the box that came with the Smart Smoke Purifier, we have two more hose clamps here and we have the cable that will connect between the Purifier and the LaserBox Pro. So what we'll do now is go through the setup of connecting these two together. Okay, so I opened the garage door and I started putting this together and realized I forgot to hit record. So what I did so far was I got the hose that came with it here. I got the hose clamps and I clamped it onto the back and onto the top of the Smoke Purifier. You can tell it goes in the top because there's a circle here that matches the circle here. So the bottom one will be our exhaust and we'll do that coming up. The next thing we want to do is take the included cable to link these two and we're just going to plug this in. So we open this up and it literally just plugs in and attaches just like that. So we're attached.  It plugs right in and it snaps into place. So both ends actually snap in really nice and they should be nice and secure now. The next thing we need to do is put our exhaust on and that's what this little one is. I'm actually going to run this. I'm going to close the garage door, run this up and run it into another laser I have because this is not the final destination of this laser. Eventually this will actually be blowing and vent it out. So I'm going to get this part on. I'm going to get our power plug and let's get this thing powered up. So this is the tube that comes with it and it's not a bad tube. It's actually very heavy duty. It's not huge but it's very heavy duty and as you can see it has all this material in the front. So the trick I found is to spread that open and out otherwise if it's all pushed in here it's very very hard to get it on the end of these tubes. So make sure you come through here and I'm sure there's probably better ways to do this but I spread it all out like this and I push this on over and then I clamp it down. So that's a quick trip if you're struggling to get the hose on your laser. So it does come with a standard power cable as you can see here. It just fits in just like this. It plugs in like that. It does say the operating voltage is 110 so that's good for here in the US. So we plugged it in down there. As you can see it does say it's a class one laser as well and it is time to get this thing fired up. So now that everything is connected in the back I'm going to turn this on and we're going to see what it does. Awesome. So it's all turned on. The lights came on. It looks like there's LEDs under both sides here and we have a flashing button. The next thing the manual tells us to do is go to our computer and we're going to load some software. So if you're looking inside the build area is actually 500 by 300mm which is a good size build area for a machine like this. It does have 22mm of workable height and if you remove the honeycomb tray which it does say you can do you can get 52mm of workable height. Now I believe this whole tray slides out. There's a couple of screws here. You take the screws out and the whole tray slides out. That way it allows you to empty out underneath the honeycomb and anything that might have fallen down after a while. But I tell you 500 by 300 of workable space in here is pretty good. So this is what we have now. Our laser box pro is connected to the wifi. It is turned on as you can see the lights in here. The inside of this thing looks really cool. If I get up in here you can see the honeycomb on the bottom there. You can see the linear rails that they use, the cable chains. There is a water tube back there. This thing is water cooled. There is the laser itself. It's all contained inside of this box. So it all looks very compact and nice in there. I cannot wait to get this thing going. And here's the little button. It's hard to see but it is glowing blue so it's ready to go. Now if we go over here to our make block smart smoke purifier you can see that it's very sleek as well. This thing looks super nice. I mean it looks great on the table. It's going to look great on the shelf I'm going to put it on. And I hope it performs as well as it looks because this thing really does look nice. So I'm just looking at this smart smoke purifier. And I thought, you know what, let's take a closer look. So I open this thing up and this door, this top is very heavy. It is actually a very heavy top there. And if you look right here it tells you what it is. So here's the replacement and if you pop it up this is a cube. And it looks like it has a filters inside of there. And if we spin this around it has filters all the way through. So it does look like the arrows here show which way the airflow should go. And it looks like it's this way. I did pull it out like this. And if you look on the pictures it does show the arrow facing the front of the machine. We get a look inside. It looks like an empty chamber here. That's where the air comes in. It goes through. It looks like your fan is right there. And then it exhausts out the back. So that's pretty cool. I'm just going to set that back in there just like that. And I'm going to close the top and we're going to go on to the next steps. So the next step in the manual is to start our first laser burn. So we got this box right here. It comes with a three millimeter bass wood and three and a half millimeter cardboard. And if you come up here and look you can see the cardboard inside of this one and the bass wood inside of that one. So that's cool that they give you some material to play with. This stuff should actually be auto recognized by the laser. And it should do all of the settings for us. So let's try it. So the next thing it says to do is get a piece of material. And that's what I have here. I grabbed the cardboard for this one. And what we're going to do is set the cardboard in just like this. So once the cardboard is set in there, we are actually going to close the top here. And it's going to turn on. The camera is going to come on and the lights are going to come on. Now what we need to do is run over to the software and let's get our first burn started. So the next thing they say in the manual after turning it on is to go to makeblock.com forward slash maker dash tools forward slash laser box. As you can see, the results were not found. We did find the website, but not the results. So I hovered over hardware. I went over to laser box and I clicked that and it brought us to a new page. And in the top here, it says support. So I'm going to click on support. I'm going to click on download. And here we go. So there is a laser box PC. There is a user manual and a laser box laser what you pick. I'm not sure what that means. We're going to download the laser box PC software right here. Once it's downloaded in the bottom left of the screen here, it should be here. I'm just going to click on it to open it. And I'm going to say yes to the defaults here. So I'm going to hit next, next, next install. And it should install the laser box software. If you get a pop up for Windows firewall, Defender or anything like that, allow access if you want to allow it. Obviously that's per case. But in my case, we are going to allow it. And then we're going to hit OK. And it opens up a brand new software window here. Once the software opens up, it says, how do you prefer to connect to a new laser box or connect to a networked laser box? So I'm going to choose to connect a new laser box. So I hit new and I hit next. In my case, I'm going to use Wi-Fi. You can do a straight plug in ethernet. You can do USB all the time if you want. But I thought it would be fun to connect this thing on Wi-Fi. So I hit next and I did plug the USB cable into the laser box pro and into my computer. And now it's asking for my Wi-Fi name and password. So if you open up, it should find your Wi-Fi name and we'll type our password and we'll hit next. And once it connects, you'll see a connected successfully. And I actually verbally heard a beep on the laser itself. So I hit finish and I believe we're connected. So now we jump over here to the software and this is where we want to choose our first project. And they have a ton of stuff on here, some really cool stuff. But I want to do something kind of simple, something easy for the video. And I think I'm going to do this box. So it's going to load the project. It's going to identify the material. It looks like in my case there's a new version of the firmware that we need to update. So before we can get started, let's update the firmware. So it looks like it's going to download the firmware now and then it's going to push it up to the laser via Wi-Fi because that's how I'm connected to the laser now. This whole time in real time, this is taking me about 15 to 20 seconds so far to download. It does look like it's going to take a little bit of time. So we'll let this go and we'll be right back. Now I was watching the laser when this happened and it was pretty cool. The lights flashed, it reset itself, it turned itself off and on a couple times and now it's all back into the ready status. So what you're looking at now is actually the camera that we talked about earlier that's in the top of the lid. That is showing us our material here and it's showing us how this is actually going to be cut out. I placed the cardboard in here based on the picture of the manual. We could use it like this and all we would have to do is grab this and spin it around. And the cool thing about this is we can actually position it anywhere we want on this material as long as it fits on the material and you're going to be good to go. Now this is all the different pieces of that box we're going to build and it's really cool that it's actually showing us on the material what it's going to look like where it's going to be. So all of these lines here are actually going to be cuts. In the top right you can see there's cut and engrave here. So we want to cut this out. We don't just want to engrave it. In the top here it knows that it's three and a half millimeter cardboard and it looks like there's a whole bunch of different stuff you can get from them. In this case we are using the three and a half millimeter cardboard which is really cool. It did find the power and the speed and the number of passes it should take. I'm going to leave that all default. I got it rotated so everything is on the cardboard. I'm going to move it down just a little bit so it's off that edge. So up in the top right you see it says this is our laser box. What I want to do is click the little blue start button. This is the F6 key or this button right here and it opens it up and it tells us the estimated work time is two minutes 21 seconds which is really cool. We can preview the track if we want and it'll actually go through how it's going to do it. We don't need to do that. So what I want to do now is send this to the laser. So I hit the send button and on my laser I just heard it beep. So we're going to jump back over there. It tells us to hit the start button and we're going to do that now and let's see what we get. So I got over here and the button on the right front is flashing blue and that means it's ready to go. So we're going to hit this button and start that burn. So I have the camera positioned over the top here so we can see what happens because we cannot open this door. If we open the door the whole laser will stop. That's a safety feature of this laser. So I hit the blue button and here we go. As you can see it's doing the cuts you can see right in here that it's cutting that cardboard out and doing everything for us right inside of there. So it looks like it finished now. Everything looks like it cut really well and the button actually over here is green now. I don't know if you can hear it because we probably did a time lapse but everything just shut itself down. So the ventilation, the air pump, everything just shut down when we were done and like I said this button is green now. So I'm going to hit that button and nothing happens. So I lifted the door and I opened everything up and as you can see it looks like everything cut out really nicely. It is again cardboard. So if we lift this up everything kind of just falls out. This is going to stick a little bit because of that sticker but that's okay. So there's all the pieces here and we can put this together and make ourselves a little box. So I'm just looking at all the pieces here and you can tell that there's a little bit of charring on the edges and stuff like that. Maybe it could have gone a little bit faster but all in all it only took about two minutes. There's all the little cutouts they kind of fell down which is awesome. And all in all it only took about two minutes here and this box is going to be pretty fun to put together. And I put our little box together and this is what it looks like. It has a little lid here, it closes, it opens and it's a really fun little project that took about two and a half minutes to do on cardboard. Now I want to see this done in like acrylic or wood. The only problem with cardboard is it doesn't stay together the best without some glue so when you try to open and close it it may fall apart. But it looks really nice but the design was really cool and I really like that they include some of these fun designs to start with. The next really cool thing you can do is just take a piece of the material that they have or any material, take a black marker and you can write whatever you want. So I'm just going to do, how about we do a gym and then we better get creative. So we wrote gym and marker in a very creative non-artistic type of way. And all we have to do now is close the door here. We hit the blue button, it turns everything on and it's actually going to cut this out for us. So there we go, the image starts and it's actually going to cut it out for us. We'll speed this up real quick for you. So as you can see when it's done you can lift this up and the letters just fall out. Now I used a thick marker so it looks like a double cut everything but that's pretty cool. We actually have like a stencil now of my really artistic gym. Or we have the cutouts of the letters if you want to use those too and like I said because I used a thick marker it actually double cut some things which is really interesting. It didn't do that on these two but it definitely did on the J. But that's what we're left with and it looks really cool. You can do any drawings or writing and it'll cut it out right for you just by hitting one button. You can see I did want a little bit thinner like this and it came out really well too. This is kind of a fun thing to do if you want to have your kids draw or anybody draw and then have it kind of cut out on the cardboard or any substrate that you're using in this case we're still using that cardboard. So the next thing we're going to try is some image extrapolation which means you can take any image you want and throw it down here and it should be able to recognize it and then cut it or burn it on this side. So I'm actually going to slide this over and put this down so it's kind of low here. I don't want it hitting. And then what we're going to do is we're going to close the lid. So now you can see our image and our workspace here. Now we need to run over to the computer. All right. So what we want to do now is go back to the software. We have our image loaded and we have our material loaded. So you hit that plus button and it's going to identify the material quick and you can see the camera. It's showing our material here and the coaster the image that I did. Then we want to go to the marquee button and hit that and it says draw a square around the image that you want to extract or press the escape button to return. So let's see if we can get it all in there.  And then I'm going to kind of make it shorter here because we don't need all that coaster part in there. I really don't want this part in here. So you can actually take this eraser that's right here and you can come in and erase some of the stuff that it's seeing. So right away I see with my coaster here it's actually picking up a whole bunch of dots on that coaster that it thinks is part of the image. Now I did throw something kind of difficult at it right away. I didn't just grab a piece of paper with a picture on it or something like that. But what I'm going to do is just kind of get rid of these corners because I don't want them to burn. And if you wanted to you could go through and just get rid of all of the little dots. I'm going to leave them in there for video sake. But it's kind of cool that you can actually go in and mark out stuff you don't want to see. When I'm ready I hit that checkbox and you can see the image here. I move that image over to where I want it to be on this material. I'm going to use this top corner because I want to use this material again. It looks like you can actually center it or kind of line it up if you want to. So we'll do it like that because my board as you can see the cardboard is not straight in there. And I'm going to do it in grave. It already thinks 35% power, 100% speed and one pass. So now all I have to do is go up to the top corner. We have our picture here. I have no idea how this is going to look on the cardboard, but we're going to find out. I'm going to hit start. I'm going to send it. It's going to take seven minutes and 52 seconds. I'm going to hit send. Something quick to see on the app itself. It actually shows you the path and how much time is remaining. I think that's pretty cool because you can keep track of everything while you're working on other stuff. Now, it doesn't look like you can keep working in the app itself while there's a burn going. But the cool part is you can see how much time is remaining. In this case, on that Gryffindor burn, we have about a minute and seven seconds left. And then we can do something new. But you can also pause it from here. So if I hit this button, it'll pause the laser. You can actually pause the laser also by pressing the blue button on the laser itself. So I dropped it down to 10% on this engrave. And I just wanted to show you the difference. This one is definitely not cut in. It's more just kind of burnt on. I probably should have brought this up to like 15% or 18%. But I wanted to see how much of a difference 10% made. And I like that the laser was actually firing at 10% as well. If I zoom in, you can see this one really cut off a lot at 35%. It looks cool, but not exactly engraved. So I'm going to keep dialing this in, but it is really cool that it'll do that and engrave on the wood or anything else you put in here for you. So this thing's really cool. We went through and we did some cutting on the material that came with it. In this case, it was that cardboard. And in this case, I was able to draw my name on these boards and it actually just cut it out automatically. And that's one of the cool things about this is that you did not have to be connected to the internet for that part. If you do it in black, it'll do engraving. If you do it in red, it'll actually cut. I only did it in black because that's all I had. But I tell you, it's really cool when you can just draw a material, set it in the laser, hit the button, and it'll do it for you. We made a little box and that was the first project we did. And that came right from the software. It was really easy. I just picked it. I sent it to the printer. I hit the button and we were good to go. This thing is running completely wireless as far as the network goes. But besides being wireless, you can actually do USB so you can plug it straight in. You don't have to have Wi-Fi at your house at all. Or you can hardwire it to your router or your network, which is another great option as well. I can see putting these on Wi-Fi or hardwired in something like a makerspace or a school where you could have computers in one area and your laser is in another area. You can design, you can send everything right to it, walk up and hit the button. I love that it's so simple and it's such a cool feature to actually send it and have that feedback right here where you hit the button and everything starts. As you saw while we were testing, the five megapixel camera auto-focused everything in. It read the little code on the cardboard and identified the cardboard for us and we were able to see our material in real time and put our layout right on top of it. It didn't matter if it was a little bit crooked, if it was horizontal, if it was vertical, it didn't matter. You have the option to actually drop your design right on it and line it up how you want it to cut. This is a really cool thing because then if you have something like we did with the engraving where we only used the top corner, I can still use the rest of that sheet. I can add other pieces in where it'll engrave or cut right on that sheet and I don't have as much waste. And that's very important in the laser world because there really is a ton of waste when you don't have that. The other thing I really like about the camera is that unlike my 50 watt laser over here that doesn't have a camera, I don't have to run back and forth and line it up five or 10 times or whatever it is to get everything lined up. It's very similar to the camera that's used in Lightburn which I'll be adding to my 50 watt laser but this is already built in, it's built into the lid and I think it's a great addition for such a very sophisticated laser like this. In addition to the camera, this thing actually auto levels as well. So when you go in and it determines what material you're using, the laser actually auto levels inside to get the right focal length. If you don't have their material and you're using your own, as long as you know how thick it is, you actually enter that yourself and it'll auto level that way you're always getting the right focal length, you never have to worry about that part. As you saw, I've been standing here filming and this actually kind of went down into a shutdown mode. I wanted to do this while it was on because this thing is really not that loud.  This one's not too bad. It definitely could be used in a probably a more noisy environment like a classroom or definitely a garage or maker space. This can do stuff on several different materials just like any other CO2 laser. The cool thing about this is if you use make blocks materials, it automatically detects it. If you don't, as long as you know what the material is and how thick it is, it'll do it. And you can actually adjust all the settings as you saw when I did that engraving as well. Another thing about the laser is it supports a huge range of file formats. All of the popular formats are supported. You don't have to worry about if you're just pulling a JPEG or an SVG in. If you're using CoralDraw, it'll work with the LaserBox Pro. I'm gonna be testing a lot of that. We're gonna be doing a lot of coasters. I'm gonna do some sign engraving. I'm gonna get a lot of use out of the wood here that came with it and I'm gonna see if I can make some ornaments for Christmas too.  For this one, I just wanted to do the unboxing and walk through the setup and some of the fun features. Another cool thing about this laser is it has eight different sensors for safety. If something gets blocked in your air filter, it'll let you know. If something's going on the side of the laser, it'll let you know. Like I said, it has eight different sensors. And one of those sensors is if the door is open. So if you open the door like this, it'll actually pause the engrave or the cut while the door is open. When you're done, you close the door and it'll actually keep going. It's really cool. You can do that from the software too, but it's a really safe thing. If you're running this in a classroom and a kid comes up and opens this door, you can hear it, it beeps, it'll stop everything. That way no one gets hurt, no one gets burnt by the laser or anything like that. No little hands can come in. I really like that feature. And I think all CO2 lasers should have that just because it's really easy to forget that the beam is going in and you can stick your hand in and get burnt. Let's talk about price just for a second. So normally I think this is about a $6,000 laser. It goes for about $5,500 on sale. And I think at the time of filming this, it was right before Black Friday in the year 2020. And they have a sale going on right now.  That's a really good deal if you compare it to some of the other smart CO2 lasers out there. And one of the big benefits about this is you don't have to have the internet. You can plug this straight into a computer. You don't have to be online. And that is a huge benefit over something like the Glowforge where you have to plug in. Now the Glowforge has other options and stuff as well, but you have to be connected to the internet to use it. In this case, if you're in an area you don't have internet, like in the country maybe, you don't have to have it. As long as you have the software on your computer, you plug in USB and you're good to go. But I do think that 4895 is still kind of expensive for a laser, but in this case, I really think that with all the technology you're getting here, the camera, everything reading, the autofocus, the autofocus of the laser itself, being able to draw right on material, putting it in, it reading it and cutting it out or engraving it, the filtration system that helps filter the air before it pumps it out. You're not just pumping the bad air out into the environment. This is actually gonna be pumping outside of my house, so it'll filter. And then from the second tube, it'll go right outside, which is a really cool option because at least you're getting some of that filtered out. The look of this thing is awesome and I tell you, for 4895 it's not a bad deal. If you have that money laying around, if you're looking for a really smart sophisticated laser, this is one that I would definitely check out. Now I don't have another smart laser to compare this to, but I do have a 50 watt CO2 laser over here and right here I have a five and a half watt diode laser. And you see a lot of my videos are on that diode laser so far. With that being said, I don't think it's that bad for all the technology and what you get in this package. If you had one of these, let me know in the description below what you would do with it. Would it be engraving? Would it be cutting? Would it be carving? Would it be making coasters? Anything you would do. Give me some ideas down below in the comments and maybe I'll do them on some of my next videos. I hope you guys love the MakeBlock LaserBox Pro. Thank you so much to X-Tool for sending this thing out. I really appreciate that. I can't wait to start playing with this thing and getting some more videos out there for you. I hope you guys learned something today and as always, keep prittin'. Or should I say keep burnin' in this case. What's up everybody? I hope you guys liked the video. If you did, give me that thumbs up. Hit that subscribe button right here and the little bell to get notified anytime we go live on Monday nights for hot makes or anytime a new 3D printing or laser video comes out. Have you seen this one?


So one of the things that we need to worry about with a drill's restaurant is obviously we're going to be Working with investors. It's a lot of up-front money So we have to make sure that these investors are pretty much okay with what we can pull back in so We're gonna assume say the investors brought in $200,000 we were able to convince them to give us $200,000 of our initial capital income and We said, you know, we're able to give you guys back About $45,000 a year All right. Well, that's again gonna be across Five payments. So five years. So we have to look at that now in this rate factor So again, just like we did with in per PMV our PMT PV Rate and again, it asks for our number of payments our PMT and our present value Now one thing that we have to factor in is this rate right now This rate is also known as something called our return on Investment as the investor. So just a FYI there. I mean, I'm just gonna There that's and that's something to kind of keep in the back of your head when we're working with This money and the reason why is because an investor is gonna look at that number and they're gonna say, well, you know That's not really a big number for me, you know only getting about 4% As my return on investment You know, I'm not really happy with that. Maybe if you were to up it to like a hundred and five thousand Yeah, see that would be if you give me that at once every five years. I'd be okay with that but 4.6 not really a lot now the problem is with a restaurant again It's a word of mouth kind of thing just because you open the restaurant doesn't mean you're gonna be immediately booming It's you're you're hopefully getting people in some of the early adopters come in and they say I really like this and Start to get in so one of the things we can kind of factor in this maybe instead We'll also add in because again, we have to attract these investors I'm gonna go ahead and say that we're gonna start working off of not only these payments. I still can only give you about $45,000 a year But I'm also gonna give you some dividends the first year. I'm not gonna give you any But the second year I'm gonna add in maybe five thousand dollars and as you can see I'm kind of saying on top of What we've already planned out I'll also give you an extra Incremental amount each time So suddenly not only am I giving them 45 thousand dollars But I'm also giving them a little bit of an extra kind of bonus for being an investor. So across the years It's not only say for example $45,000 but now we're looking at it as $70,000 so suddenly we have to look at calculating out sort of this return on investment So we first off start out at the same kind of how much are we dealing with on our payment? So again, we start the startup at our $200,000 Now one of the things we are going to do is we've got these totals that we're gonna be playing around with So those are actually coming into play as well that equals 60 equals 70 So suddenly what we're looking at is how much are we paying off of this? So right now again, we still have the $200,000 that we're built off of but suddenly that Plus 45 knocks down our kind of Saving our amount and we can actually kind of draw this down as well We can see by the end of it. What we're actually starting to see is we're getting about $80,000 Now one of the things we can kind of do is well Maybe what if we want to project how much we actually want to have our investors? We went to them we explained our pricing and they're just like, you know what I Want 10% back in five years now 10% that's actually really nice a lot a lot of investors want a lot higher So we say we want this now Return on investment where we're saying we want a 10% answer. We want a 10% return here Now one of the things I can do is I can work on my present value of that What what are you giving me now? What would that be really worth? And this is a something that we can help factor in so we go NP V Returns the net present value of an investment based on the discount rate in series of future payments and income So we're basically saying oh well, you know technically speaking. This is where accounting becomes fun Technically speaking. We're not really getting $200,000 we're actually getting a little different. We're actually getting say for example D26 we're getting that 10% that you want but they were also looking at it from our Given rate our C24 our C20 to C24. I'm gonna be giving you this much money back every year So in reality sake, you're actually kind of giving me a little more, right? Yeah So suddenly what I can do with this is I can say take that C 20 of that d27 and take the C 19 that we have right here and You're really actually giving me a little bit more than you were initially. This is my net present value is right now what you're giving me is only about $8,000 so now what we do is we want to work off of sort of our Internal return on investment you're gonna give me this this $8,000 quote air quote and what that's gonna do is that's gonna factor in returns the internal based on a series of cash You're gonna give me that and now from C19 to C24 What that's actually gonna turn into is up. Well now see we're gonna do a return on investment of about 11,000 11% you're actually gonna give me roughly that what you were looking for in that desired amount here