Firstly let us have a look at the history of control systems in the Audio Visual industry.

There are two prominent control solutions that have been around since the 1980’s. With more than 20 years of experience as well as continual Research and Development, these companies lead the industry and are the only true consideration in commercial & high-end environments due to the flexibility & reliability they offer. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses as well as the organisation who delivers your solution so picking the right product as well as the organisation to implement it will ultimately provide you with a solution you are extremely happy with or a poor outcome that leaves you somewhat disappointed.

AMX & Crestron lead this marketplace. One of the downfalls using either of these products is the significant expense you will go to but ultimately you will not achieve the flexibility or intelligence achieved with these platforms. If you are not technically minded than comprehending this can be difficult but the best way to explain it is this:

Imagine you were purchasing a painting to hang in your new home and you were talking to an art gallery as well as the artist. You are not purchasing an existing painting because none of them will match with your new decor so you are looking to engage the artist to paint something that will be suited to you.

An important thing to remember is that every automation system in some shape or form is a custom solution and is not something you pull out of the box and turn on.

Now the artist is telling you that you can only have three colours and on a canvas that is one of three sizes and paints are water based only. Plus he can only offer you a few designs to choose from.

Not very flexible is it…

Both AMX and Crestron offer a blank canvas of a size you choose. The problem is that the artist needs to be good to deliver a great result. If the artist is not so good he might use a stencil designed by someone else but the problem is that he can’t change the stencil and can only use the colours provided with it. Sort of like a colouring-in book….

Take into consideration that the Gallery is the company you look to purchase the solution from and the artist is the programmer who will provide the user interface and code that is the core of any controlled environment.

If you can grasp this concept, now you know the difference between a control solution provided on AMX or Crestron verses the large number of control systems that have entered the market in the past 5 years due to demand. The majority of new control systems that have entered the market such as RTI, Control 4 & Philips Pronto provide limited flexibility either due to the hardware design or the proprietary software that is used to program them. Apart from the significant cost difference that these systems do provide customers there is one major benefit for the programmer not requiring anywhere near the skill and experience of a certified and experienced coder.

AMX provides the greatest flexibility when it comes to language based programming and although some people will have you believe that it takes much longer to program an AMX system over its competitors; that is only because of the poor programming methods used.

Our organisation has been providing solutions on the AMX platform for the past decade and our approach has allowed us to achieve deployment for residential projects within a third of the time of our competitors as well as delivering the solution remotely and giving the client a far more feature rich environment that is thoroughly bug tested and reliable.

More often than not, when it comes to people and organisations selecting a suitable integrator, price is a major consideration, but when you consider that each integrator is unique, it no longer becomes apples for apples.  Here are a couple of tips:

If a colouring in book is all you need and can afford, by all means go with it but take into consideration your requirements now and in the future because picking the wrong solution can be more expensive further down the track.

Be careful selecting the artist (programmer). Too many people assume that a programmer is just a programmer and that statement couldn’t be further from the truth. No artist is the same and all have their unique talents. Their background, training and experience are all very important.

Avoid organisations utilising contract programmers. The programming of a system is a core component of a solution and there for should be key personnel for the organisation delivering the solution. Organisations using contract programmers are doing so for a few reasons; to reduce or minimise costs, to cope with too much workload and a lack of expertise within the organisation. All of these reasons are not in favour of you as the customer. If you are making a significant investment with an organisation to deliver a control solution then why shouldn’t they be doing the same?

Make sure that the organisation providing the solution is a certified agent of the control product. Manufacturers want to insure that their products are installed correctly by trained people. They are also out to grow their market share so if an organisation is not a certified agent for the product, it is most likely with good reason!

A fundamental thing to consider is the system design. A control solution is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. This can be the products used or it can be how they are interconnected. It is not uncommon to find a control solution delivered with a poor system design that ultimately limits the functionality and flexibility. The system design should try to achieve ultimate flexibility on a hardware level and leave only programming changes to achieve the desired result.

Redundancy and resource sharing is paramount if you want to get the most out of your investment. When you are going to the expense of such a system, it should not be functioning as a glorified universal remote which unfortunately we see far too often…

As you can see there is a great deal to think about and you need to answer many questions when considering an integrator. You are placing a great deal of trust in this organisation to deliver on the promises made and your expectations.

Rabone Systems, a leading control solutions company has implemented its proprietary touch panel tracking system into its Residential v2.0 software.

The system allows users to roam freely within the home and provide automatic configuration of the control environment. The software identifies the location of AMX MVP series wireless touch panels and configures the appropriate control pages.

In addition to the auto configuration of the control environment, the software provides a number of features that can be enabled or disabled whilst a user is roaming with a touch panel.

Active lighting tracking with override and last zone restore provides automatic lighting when a user enters into the room, the ability to override a room’s current active state, and return a room to its previous state when the user leaves. This allows a user in transit to walk around the home without needing to manually turn on a single light or push a single button.

Active media tracking monitors the current media source being watched in one room and will route the source to the next media zone entered. With Rabone Systems residential software built around resource management and the infrastructure supporting native signal distribution for all media devices, it is now possible for someone to start watching a DVD in the family room which is being sourced from any player in the house, activate the tracking mode, walk into the bedroom and continue the same DVD whilst having the option to automatically shutdown the previous zone or leave it running.

Byron Rabone, Director and Founder of Rabone Systems commented “Automation in the home is about true resource management, squeezing the most out of these resources whilst building in redundancy and system stability.

Our residential software has been developed over the past four years and further development continues every day. It offers our customers a solution that is not obtainable from traditional programming methods, provides a more feature rich environment and a thoroughly tested platform.”

The proprietary tracking system utilizes two existing technologies, (Dynalite and AMX), requires no additional hardware costs to implement and does not utilize RFID technology, which is now making its way into the automation industry with additional costs to implement. It is extremely accurate and is not limited to AMX wireless panels.

The system functions by instructing networked devices to pulse discrete IR codes which are picked up by Dynalite panels and sensors located around the home. Dynalite broadcasts these messages along with the Dynalite device ID across the network which is received by the AMX control system. The software interprets the data, identifies the device, and stores its location in an array. Each touch panel is unique, including the tracking system options that can be enabled or disabled.

Communications between wireless touch panels and AMX are still handled by standard WIFI eliminating the limitations of IR but providing a unique method of identifying the location of devices.

Potentially any device that has the ability to pulse an IR code such as a watch could be used allowing a user to get up in the middle of the night for a midnight snack or a trip to the toilet with only the requirement of opening the fridge door or lifting the seat on the toilet.

Byron Rabone commented,” In the short term, Rabone Systems has provided a low cost and effective method of achieving an intelligent tracking system.

In the long term, we see short and long range RFID technology playing a big part and offering even more functionality to the home user like automatically reclining the home theatre chair to the user’s favourite position without having to lift a finger, just like luxury cars do with driver seat adjustment today.

However further progression and use of such technology will occur, such as setting your desired water temperature for a shower or bath based on user and ambient temperature but instead of having to configure a system manually, the system should be intelligent enough to monitor a user’s habits and set accordingly.

With the reading and writing capabilities of RFID technology, a user will eventually be able to take some of these creature comforts with them to a hotel or friend’s house.

The possibilities are endless which is what makes this industry so exciting.”

For further information please contact Rabone Systems.

Ph: 1800 722 663

Email: Info@rabonesystems.com.au

Web: www.rabonesystems.com.au

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-f454a8c30a9a0a4196f96c0a3bc61785}

The problem is that due to their popularity, we now have so many to choose from. Escient Fireball, Axonix Media Max, Imerge, AMX Max & Kaleidescape to name the major players but only one stands out from the crowd.

Almost all DVD servers or Digital media servers have an operating system because essentially they are a computer with a large amount of storage space. The majority of manufacturers resort to using Microsoft or Linux as an OS. Out of the two, Linux has been proven to be more stable in this environment but the limitations of using an OS from another provider is that you are at the mercy of the OS.

Kaleidescape is one of the only manufacturers who have its own operating system called KEAOS which stands for ‘Kaleidescape Entertainment Appliance Operating System’. What this equates to is a product that compares to the reliability of a mission critical, enterprise grade server.

They like to call it “The Kaleidescape Experience” and that is exactly what it is, an experience!

We can talk about all the Digital Media Servers, DVD Media Servers or Jukebox players and the different manufacturers like Escient, Axonix, Imerge & AMX but it would be no different to talking about backyard cricket versus the Ashes.

There is no comparison other than the importing of content to allow it to be played back. Much the same as backyard cricket uses a bat and a ball similar to that used in the Ashes or a test match.

Kaleidescape is in a league of its own and yes once upon a time with the price tag to match. Now with the release of the mini system we can deliver systems for less than $ 15,000, considerably less than the $ 30,000 entry level price tag we once faced.

It is the ‘Kaleidescape experience’ that provides management & storage of over 1800 DVD’s and 19,800 CD’s on a single server. It has the ability to cascade servers in minutes creating a virtually infinite collection (Not quite possible because Kaleidescape won’t let you import the same disc twice.) and simultaneous content streaming to 45 players from the same server.

It has a User interface that other manufacturers attempt to copy and it exists on a future proofed and backwards compatible platform unlike some manufacturers who have discontinued their platforms in the past, leaving the customer with an obsolete and non-upgradeable piece of equipment.

In fact, the very first Kaleidescape system produced more than 6 years ago is still in service and runs on the same KEAOS as new systems purchased today.

If there is any negative side to Kaleidescape it would only be that it does not support the ability to copy photos to the server for slide shows or let you dump your dodgy MP3 music collection to it.

But Kaleidescape is not really a digital media server, it’s an ‘Entertainment System’ used for watching your purchased DVD’s or listening to your vast CD collection in its original & intended format.

Untouched, just how the producers and composers wanted you to see and hear it…

The EPG delivers AMX user’s full access of Free to Air, Foxtel and Optus programming information Australia wide.

In addition to programming information, the software simplifies the way people search, preview, watch and schedule content.

Integrated with Rabone Systems residential software, selection of a decoder has become a thing of the past. A user simply views the channel programming information from the EPG, and then selects whether to record or watch the program, the system handles the rest.

The ability to preview the broadcast channel before committing to watch or record is available and integration with High Level Interface DVR’s such as the Digital View DVR-810 is standard.

Scheduling programming is not limited by one decoder or DVR like other systems and archived content is easily retrievable without having to search through multiple DVR’s.

SMS notification to individual users when favourite programs are starting shortly is achieved with the addition of an SMS gateway. The ability to record the program if you are not already is as simple as an SMS reply.

For further information please contact Rabone Systems.

Ph: 1800 722 663

Email: Info@rabonesystems.com.au

Web: www.rabonesystems.com.au

The RTI K4 and the soon to be released T4 both have the ability to view web sites, providing a great platform for a user interface. Lack of Java support eliminates the possibility of utilising G3 Web Control.

There will be 3 mains steps involved to get RTI control and feedback. Firstly, the GUI must be created in HTML with a standard naming convention for your buttons. I used button__<0 or 1>.jpg where button one in the OFF state would be button_1_0.jpg and button_1_1.jpg when ON. Add a hyperlink to the image that points to the NetLinx master on port 81 with an extension to allow the master to recognise the button channel. It is also wise to add a series of chars to capture the end of the hyperlink. 3 pipes work fine. The link for button 1 would look like http://192.168.0.1:81/touchpanel/button?1|||

Next create a TCP server in your NetLinx code to monitor and respond to the requests from the GUI. Remember this must be on port 81. [ip_server_open( 0:3:0, 81, 1 ) ]. Using a data_event, the button presses can now be captured by looking for the hyperlinks under the GET HTTP header. Extract the button number between the button and the ||| and convert to a number. You now have the button channel to trigger whatever events you desire.

Finally, you have to create the feedback for either this button or any others it may have triggered. Buffer the html file of the GUI and then search for the button_ or whatever naming standard you chose. If you want to turn the button ON, change the proceeding 2 chars with _1 or to turn it off use _0. Save the buffer back to the GUI file. With the HTML updated with all feedback changes, send a HTTP header redirecting (302 Found) the RTI back from port 81 to the originating html file on the master. If the page fails to refresh with the new image then you can instead redirect to another html file which contains a simple JavaScript function that attaches a random extension to the redirect. ( window.location=”/touchpanel/index.html”+”?”+Math.random()*100; ) This will cause the html to be properly refreshed every time.