Topic: External control of MixRacks | Allen & Heath Digital Community

External control of MixRacks

This topic contains 9 replies, has 6 voices, and was last updated by dmills 15 years ago.

Viewing 10 posts - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

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2009/01/30 at 9:39 pm #22003

Kari
Participant

Is the iLive controllable from an external controller (AMX/Crestron via telnet) like is possible with the iDR?

How large is the PL power supply in the iLive racks?

2009/02/09 at 12:06 pm #24173

Kari
Participant

quote:

Originally posted by Kari

Is the iLive controllable from an external controller (AMX/Crestron via telnet) like is possible with the iDR?

How large is the PL power supply in the iLive racks?

No one has an idea?

2009/02/23 at 10:16 pm #24190

jheliker
Participant

Hi All,

I’m also interested in controlling both the iLive and iDR mix rack externally, what options are available, especially over a TCP/IP connection? (ala. AMX, Crestron, etc)

Is there a published control protocol document available?

Thanks!!

– James Heliker
20th Century Fox Studios | Production Engineer
james.heliker@fox.com

2009/02/24 at 11:24 am #24191

bucks
Participant

Hello All
Currently external control protocols are limited to MIDI. There is discussion of a telnet server being included in a future firmware release, similar to that on iDR8. If anyone has a wish list of features to be controlled via telnet, feel free to post them and we’ll add them to the list. Metering is always the sticking point, as telnet works via request / response, so delivering a metering payload on a regular basis over telnet is tricky to code. Hope that helps.

Andy
A&H

2009/02/25 at 10:47 pm #24197

millst
Participant

My only comment would be that Telnet is fairly old school now.
Perhaps some form of API would be more appropriate these days?

I would vote for it being compatible with the PL designer before implementing something like telnet.

2009/03/03 at 7:35 pm #24219

Kari
Participant

quote:

Originally posted by millst

My only comment would be that Telnet is fairly old school now.
Perhaps some form of API would be more appropriate these days?

I would vote for it being compatible with the PL designer before implementing something like telnet.

In a theater situation: How would I use API to interface a mixing console with a show controller (say SFX to say something) and a handful of interface boxes (such as the ones from https://www.kiss-box.com/) ?

2009/03/04 at 9:37 am #24222

bucks
Participant

Hi Kari and Millst,

We take both points on board. Millst, PL Designer is on a to do list, although no time frame yet im afraid, and it does make a very nice way of creating a custom interface. It communicates however using our own proprietary network protocol which as Kari says restricts its use.

Just had a look at the SFX spec, and the MIDI output for a Cue on SFX Standard looks like it would talk to the current iLive MIDI implementation. In the future if we implementated Telnet, it also looks like SFX Deluxe can output telnet commands, so there is a possible tie in there, although i can’t see any documentation on how customisable the telnet strings are ? Bottom line, I think both external control protocols will be required eventually to satisify all users.

Cheers.

Andy
A&H

2009/03/04 at 9:45 am #24223

bucks
Participant

Sorry Kari
I also missed the second part of your original question. The PL alternative, in terms of power consumption over distance of cable and number of devices plugged in, is defined by an interactive spreadsheet. I believe this can be found on the iDR (Install) part of the Allen & Heath website, if not you can contact A&H technical support and ask for the “PL Calculator”.

Hope this helps.

Andy
A&H

2009/03/16 at 3:31 am #24248

dmills
Participant

Could I suggest forgetting telnet (It is a hairy protocol to implement at the best of times and is really poorly suited to interactive control), and going for Open Sound Control (OSC) instead.

There are some good libraries available for implementing it on the client side and it is actually designed for things like this.
I suspect that Steve Harris would be more then happy to license you liblo (which is a light weight implementation in C) for closed source use fairly cheaply.

Even just documenting the packets that need to be sent to connect to the rack and what the contents mean would be a good start, I was thinking of having a go at doing it with wireshark, but getting the structure from you guys would be easier!

Metering over a network is notoriously hard to get right, and I would suggest that broadcast (or multicast) UDP with a defined layout is probably about as good as it gets, a hundred channels will easily fit into a 250 byte packet and if the transmission rate was say 30Hz, that is only 7.5KB/second.

Just a thought.

Regards, Dan.

2009/04/01 at 12:12 pm #24142

antonyja
Participant

quote:

Originally posted by dmills

Metering over a network is notoriously hard to get right, and I would suggest that broadcast (or multicast) UDP with a defined layout is probably about as good as it gets, a hundred channels will easily fit into a 250 byte packet and if the transmission rate was say 30Hz, that is only 7.5KB/second.

We have over a 1000 meters in the current iLive system (10 per input channel, 11 per mix channel, and then FX, monitor, RTA etc…), at 25Hz. This is approx 51kB/s. Currently these are sent TCP, as broadcasting UDP would be a bit much (and wouldn’t work cross sub-nets). We are looking at changing this to multicast for the future, which would be more efficient & allow 3rd party apps to use the metering info.

If only the AES24 protocol hadn’t got the ISO-OSI layers all mixed up[!], then an audio control network standard we could all have used would have been with us a decade ago – ah well…

Antony Jackson
Software Manager
Allen and Heath Limited
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